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THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 



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THE DYNAMIC OF 
MANHOOD 



LUTHER H.^^ULICK, M.D. 

Author of "The Efficient Life," "Mind and Work," etc. 



124 East 28th Street, New Yobk 
1917 



fk<?S 



Copyright, 19 17, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



printed in the united states of AMERICA 



AUG -I 1917 

©CI,A470518 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The original text of this book was sub- 
mitted in manuscript to specialists in the 
various fields from which I have drawn 
data. These have given suggestions and 
criticisms of great value. Dr. T. M. Bal- 
liet, New York University; Dr. Adolph 
Meyer of Johns Hopkins; Dr. J. H. Mc- 
Curdy of Springfield, Mass.; Dr. C. H. 
Thurber of Ginn & Company; Dr. Mabel 
S. Ulrichs of Minneapolis; Thomas J. 
Brown of New York City; Dr. William F. 
Snow of the American Social Hygiene Asso- 
ciation; Paul Popenoe, Editor of Genetics; 
President Eliot; Dr. Wm. McCastline of 
Columbia University; Dr. T. M. Bull of 
Naugatuck, Conn. ; Jerome Greene of New 
York; Dr. B. S. Oppenheimer of New York; 
F. S. Brockman of the International Com- 
mittee of Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciations; Mrs. F. F. Jewett, and Dr. Sid- 
ney L. Gulick. 



vi INTRODUCTORY NOTE 

The book owes its existence to the appre- 
ciative insistence of my former pupil and 
friend. Dr. Max J, Exner, a worker in this 
field. He has given also most understand- 
ing criticism and suggestion. 

li* H. G. 



CONTENTS 

TAQB 

I. The Two Major Motives • . . 3 

Heart hungers — ^their physical basis, 
nature, and value. 

n. Hunger for a Friend 41 

Loneliness. What is a friend? Loy- 
alty the masculine virtue, under- 
standing, sympathy. Effects of 
friendship — the transmission and 
discovery of character. Formation 
of friendships. College friendship. 
Friendship and personality. 

HI. Hunger for Woman 67 

Development of feelings. Spooning 
— ^illicit love, origin and use. Love 
and passion. Monogamy. Auto- 
erethism. Desire and imagination. 
Early marriage. 

IV. Hunger for Children 119 

DiflFerences between mother and fa- 
ther love. The right to be well 
born; the right to be born. What 
is a good father? Community as- 
pects of parental affection. 

V. Hunger for God , . 137 

Universality, nature, and origin. 
Growth, dangers, intellectual ad- 
vances. The ideal of God. The 
loving personal God. 



I 

THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 

Stomach-Hunger and Heart-Hunger 

The desires, or hungers, may be roughly 
divided into two classes: 

1. Those that seek some benefit for one's 
self — these are sometimes called the stom- 
ach-hungers — or Hunger, and 

2. Those that seek some benefit for 
others — these are sometimes called heart- 
hungers — or Love. 

The stomach-hungers have their satis- 
faction in personal well-being, and involve 
such a range of activities and enjoyments 
as eating, hunting, fishing, earning a liv- 
ing, sleeping, enjoyment of health, vigor 
of body or mind, personal success, advance- 
ment, scholarship, honors, solid financial 
conditions, ownership of property, power 
over people, etc. 

3 



4 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

The heart-himgers have their satisfac- 
tion in the well-being of other people and 
involve such a range of activities and en- 
joyments as the longing for and realiza- 
tion of friendship, comradeship, parent- 
hood, romantic and marital love; the ser- 
vice of the community, one's school, col- 
lege, country; and also the longing for, 
search after, and love of God. 

These two hungers, stomach-hunger and 
heart-hunger, correspond to the two great 
necessities that are laid on all living spe- 
cies — namely, to live and to reproduce, 
that the species may live. To reproduce 
in the humankind involves the love of 
woman, the love of children, and the love 
of friends and the tribe, that made men 
willing to fight with and for each other in 
protection of the tribe and in getting food 
for all. 

These are the two great driving motives 
of humankind. It cannot truly be said 
that one is more important than the other, 
for both are essential. Either one viewed 
broadly involves the other. For example, 



THE TWO MAJOU MOTIVES 5 

society is so tied together that really to 
secure one's own welfare and happiness in- 
volves that others shall secure theirs also 
— and really to serve others one needs a 
well cared-for, developed self. 

The first years of one's life are inevitably 
given predominantly to the development of 
one's self. The most important things for 
the baby to do are to eat and to sleep. The 
heart-hungers develop quietly during the 
early years, but in the teens — adolescence 
— they come with a rush, and their general 
characteristics are usually determined for 
life at that time — ^gangs, chums, religion, 
attitude toward boys and men, girls and 
women, what one predominantly wants, 
etc. 

I have elsewhere discussed at some 
length the conditions for the develppment 
and care of one's body and mind ("The 
Efficient Life," also "Mind and Work," 
Doubleday, Page & Co.). It is my en- 
deavor in this book to throw such light as 
I may on the heart-hungers — what they 
are, whence they come, how they are best 



6 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

developed, to what dangers they are ex- 
posed. 

I propose to treat these under four 
major categories: 

1. The love of one's kind, including the 
gang, friendship, comradeship, community, 
and country. 

2. The love of woman — including ro- 
mantic love and marriage. 

3. The love of children — including moth- 
erhood, fatherhood, and the irradiation of 
these feelings to the love of all dependent 
upon us, and of all children in the com- 
munity. 

4. The love of God — including the yearn- 
ing for beauty and goodness. 

Life is to be planned as a splendid ag- 
gressive campaign. It cannot possibly be 
lived in any big sense by spending one's 
main effort in avoiding the dangers and 
evils that are about us. It is just as im- 
portant for us to know where we want to 
go and how to get there as it is for the cap- 
tain of an ocean liner. To avoid the rocks 
is not enough for him or for us — he and 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 7 

we must have, and reach, a definite port. 
Accordingly, this book is given to the 
consideration of the positive ways in which 
the heart-hungers may be treated so as to 
produce the most worth-while results. 

The Physical Basis of the Heart- 
Hungers 

The growth and development of the 
body is largely controlled, started, acceler- 
ated, retarded, or stopped, by secretions 
that are poured into the blood stream by 
the various so-called "ductless glands," 
e. g., the thyroid, parathyroid, thymus, 
etc. These secretions are called hormones. 

The masculine and feminine character- 
istics of body and feelings that qualify and 
incline us to reproduce and care for our 
children grow with greatest intensity dur- 
ing adolescence (12-20). During these 
years certain cells, "the interstitial cells,'* 
that develop alongside of the reproductive 
cells found in the ovaries and testes are 
secreting actively, and there seems to be 
adequate evidence for us to believe that 



8 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

the development of the qualities of mas- 
culinity and femininity — of both body and 
mind — occurs only during the secretion of 
these cells. 

In the development of the embryo, cer- 
tain cells are set apart for the special pur- 
pose of being used to start new individuals. 
These are called reproductive cells. They 
are located in close relation to the organs 
that are used for this purpose, and are 
hence called the reproductive organs. 

Intimately placed in with the repro- 
ductive cells are certain other cells called 
"interstitial cells'' that have an entirely 
different function from that of the repro- 
ductive cells. These interstitial cells elab- 
orate the hormone that causes the develop- 
ment of the body in ways that enable it to 
perform adequately its reproductive func- 
tion — e. g., development of the organs of 
reproduction, and in the male muscular 
strength, needed for the larger responsi- 
bilities, breadth of shoulders, deepened 
voice, hair on face, etc. ; in the female, de- 
velopment of the hips, breast, voice, manner. 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 9 

Accompanying these somatic or bodily 
changes there are developed the corre- 
sponding psychic functions — in the man, 
love of comradeship (gang age), adventure, 
bravery, longings for a larger, higher life, 
deeper feelings for nature, romantic love 
of the girl or woman, ambition to excel — 
and in general, all the qualities that we 
know and admire as masculine. In the 
woman the corresponding changes occur. 
In both cases the religious life is accepted 
or rejected in most people during the teens. 

Let me sketch the nature of some of our 
evidence in this direction. We can show 
that these two functions exist, by obliterat- 
ing the capacity for reproduction and yet 
preserving the body and character effects 
of this hormone. For example: If the 
reproductive and interstitial cells (testes, 
ovaries) are removed by a surgical opera- 
tion and planted so they will grow in some 
other part of the body, we get the growth- 
producing function without the reproduc- 
tive function. To put the matter more 
concretely: The ovaries of a female have 



10 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

been removed early in life and a piece of 
one of the ovaries planted in another part 
of the body so that it grew. This animal 
developed normally in every way except 
that it could not have offspring. It be- 
came an adult, with all the characteristics 
of the adult. The "inner secretion '* (hor- 
mone, or sex enzyme) of the interstitial 
organs did its work, but the reproductive 
cells had no chance to function. 

Various other interesting and crucial 
experiments have been carried out: The 
removal of the ovaries from the female and 
the planting of a testicle — the female sub- 
sequently developed male characteristics — 
also the opposite, the removal of the testes 
and the implantation of an ovary, with the 
development of feminine characteristics. 
The literature of this phase of the topic is 
extensive. (One of the most recent is 
"Sex Gland Implantation,'' Lydston. 
Journal American Medical Association, 
May 13, 1916— also editorial.) 

In the male the vas deferens (the duct 
that carries the spermatozoa) can be ligated 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 11 

or cut, so that no reproductive cells can 
ever be emitted. Such a person is sterile 
— absolutely sterile — ^but even if this op- 
eration is done early in life the develop- 
ment of the child goes on in an orderly 
fashion, and at puberty the shoulders 
broaden, the muscles harden, the voice 
changes, hair grows on the face, and the 
character of the male — the man — appears 
in ambition, courage, comradeship, sex- 
love, and the like. 

We have long known that castration of 
animals has certain definite important ef- 
fects. K these glands are completely re- 
moved from a young rooster, he never de- 
velops into the fighting cock. He is 
healthy, big, selfish, soft — will never rush 
to defend a hen and will not fight, because 
he is just naturally a poltroon. He has no 
beauty — fine plumage, comb, graceful bear- 
ing; no crow, and only a semblance of spurs. 

Similar conditions obtain when a young 
stallion is cut. The horse is not a fighter 
as the stallion is, he will not defend the 
mares, he has not the spirit or endurance 



12 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

of the stallion, he is relatively weak and 
tractable. By delaying the operation, any 
given quantity of the stallion spirits can be 
allowed to develop, for the operation does 
not undo growth of body, mind, or char- 
acter that has taken place. Similar re- 
sults are observed on dogs, cats, cattle, 
jackasses, boars. 

The case is not so clear when we come 
to study the effects, especially the spiritual 
effects, of this operation on man, because 
we cannot experiment as we can do on ani- 
mals. Further than this there is a vast 
amount of confusion in the literature of 
the topic, due to disparate uses of the He- 
brew word, saris. Saris is uniformly trans- 
lated as eunuch in the Authorized Version 
of the Bible. It may with equal propriety 
be translated officer, and in the Revision 
is occasionally so translated. Saris came 
to mean a certain office in the king's court, 
corresponding somewhat to that of cham- 
berlain. There is ample evidence that it 
was customary to call all persons occupy- 
ing this position eunuchs, whether they 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES IS 

were castrated or not. It is probably true 
that originally the men chosen for these 
positions were eunuchs, and that hence 
the name came to be given to the position. 
The same is true of the Greek, eunouchos. 
Under these conditions the character of 
such '* eunuchs" cannot be examined to 
determine the effects of castration upon 
personality. 

When castration is done after full adult 
life, physical and psychic characters hav- 
ing been established, the effects are slight, 
as compared to the results secured when 
the operation is performed early. In those 
castrated late, sex desire often remains, 
and also capacity. The only evident loss 
is that of potency. 

As a boy I used to ride a mustang that 
was unusual — he was powerful, determined, 
and had extraordinary endurance. He ran 
away with me several times, once for sev- 
eral miles. I have never met such a horse 
since. The story told of him was that he 
was captured wild, being the ''king" of 
the herd, the head of a harem, and the 



14 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

brains of his clan. That is, he was a fully 
developed, active stallion. He was cas- 
trated, but retained nevertheless his vi- 
cious, powerful, brainy, determined nature. 

Examining the records in the light of 
these facts and considerations, I have no 
hesitation in saying that castration in the 
human male has an effect similar to that of 
castration on animals, that these effects 
are greater rather than lesser, and that the 
effects are greatest in the realm of char- 
acter and spiritual life. 

Thus, without the development of these 
interstitial cells and the secretion of their 
hormones, there is no growth of manliness, 
blossoming into courage, endurance, spirit, 
will, affection, devotion, sympathy, or of 
womanliness, blossoming into love, sym- 
pathy, appreciation, tenderness, devotion, 
and all of feminine power and charm. 

I hope I have made clear the great fact 
that it is the presence of these cells and 
their hormones, rather than sexual activ- 
ity, that I am talking about as basic to 
these great spiritual powers. Sexual activ- 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 15 

ity is not the basis of spiritual life. The 
spiritual life may be developed without sex 
activity. 

I believe that the road to fine, strong, 
loving character is best found for most 
through romantic love, marriage, and par- 
enthood. These are effective, not be- 
cause they involve sexual activity, but be- 
cause they constitute the deep intimate 
experiences of life. Thus while spiritual 
life is developed out of sex, it is in itself 
not sexual. 

I have tried to show that there are phys- 
ical facts associated with the capacity for 
friendship, mother-love, romantic-love, 
marital-love, involving sympathy, high en- 
deavor, great aspiration, hardihood, and 
tenderness, and further, that this physical 
basis is closely related to sex, although not 
to sexual activity. 

The Nature of Love 

The best definitions grow out of recog- 
nized cases. The most familiar type of 
love is that of the mother who cares for 



16 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

her child with joy which is sometimes akin 
to ecstasy. I have seen a mother holding 
her new baby close to her, and showing in 
every position and motion thrills of happi- 
ness beyond power of expression. She 
cares for the child from joy, not from duty. 
She responds to the faint cry at night, with 
the eagerness of one who feels the service 
to be a privilege rather than a compulsion. 
The love of some mothers for a sick or 
crippled child is deeply significant. 

Mother-love may be defined as that form 
of emotion which secures its satisfactions 
through observing and helping to secure the 
happiness and well-being of one's child. 
This may so irradiate as to include others 
— adults as well as children. It is word 
juggling to call this self-sacrifice — the 
mother is not sacrificing herself — she is 
reaUzing herself. To be sure, she is awak- 
ened at night and has tasks which in them- 
selves are some of them unpleasant, but 
for her own child it is her high happiness 
to perform these services. In doing these 
things she is no more sacrificing herself 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 17 

than is the boy who saves his money to 
buy the gun that he wants more than he 
wants anything else — of course, he goes 
largely without candy and sodas, he walks 
to save carfare, but this is not self-sacri- 
j5ce— he rejoices, for it is all to be the means 
by which he is to secure his heart's desire, 
the gun. 

Self-sacrifice as an end in itself is as ob- 
jectionable in morals as it is in conduct. 
To be wilHng to sacrifice the lesser for the 
sake of winning the greater, to have a de- 
sire so strong that it will master and con- 
trol the little ephemeral wants, is evidence 
of power and the realization of the larger 
self. The mother is not caring for the 
child because she sees that it will pay her 
to do so, that the child will some day grow 
up and care for her. She does not care 
for her babe ior any reason at all, except 
that it is her joy and delight to do so. It 
is not for reward — she does not expect to 
receive even recognition from the helpless 
mite in her arms — she loves it, that is all. 

I do not mean that all mothers love all 



18 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

their children all the time, in the way and to 
the degree of which I am speaking. I do 
mean that when the term mother-love is 
used, this is the kind of thing that is meant, 
and that what 1 have described is a pic- 
ture of mother-love as found in the best of 
mothers much of the time. 

The love of a comrade comes also to 
mind. It is shown by men who love each 
other with that wholesome power that 
makes each a joy to the other. To know 
that in a fight you would rather have your 
friend at your back than any one else in 
the world — to trust in his standing by you 
no matter what comes, just as you are 
aware you want to stand by him — this is 
a great joy in itself. Those who have not 
realized at least moments of such comrade- 
ship have failed to find the upper reaches 
of life's possibilities. You have played 
foot-ball alongside of your friend, you have 
gone through pain, sorrow, and defeat 
with him, you share your new joy or idea 
with him, and in so doing you double its 
interest and joy even to yourself. 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 19 

These are such experiences as make life 
and the world significant. These great 
experiences in human relationship consti- 
tute the highest plane of existence and hu- 
man attainment, so far as we now know. 
This is reality. This is the supremely 
worth while. The biggest thing about col- 
lege is the large opportunity which it af- 
fords for men to find each other — and so to 
find themselves. 

When we use the word love we also 
think of love between man and woman. 
But we shrink from any real inquiry into 
these strands of love, for so often it ap- 
pears that this love takes on forms that 
are ugly and selfish, and thus become 
temptation rather than opportunity for 
attainment. Love between a man and a 
woman may, and often does and always 
should, work out through the years into 
a great, enduring feeling-state, that is like 
comradeship — but is even more tender, 
and is as pure as mother-love, but more 
reciprocal. In this love between a man 
and a woman is found the intense desire to 



20 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

please, to satisfy, to glorify, to serve, the 
other. Love poetry is largely given to the 
expression of these devotion-feelings. The 
greatest satisfactions of sex-love are to be 
found in the happiness of the loved one. 
Here, as in the former case, what is in- 
volved is not self-sacrifice, it is self-realiza- 
tion through the love and service of 
another. It is recognized as something 
bigger and better than one's self. Even 
love of this kind does not live to get, but 
to give. When it turns to getting, it is no 
longer love, and it is no longer a thing of 
beauty. 

These three illustrations as to kinds of 
love will be found to be misleading if they 
are understood in any hard and fast way. 
For example, in my illustration I speak of 
mother-love. The love of a father for his 
children is sometimes as strong as is that 
of the mother — and it does not differ much 
from that of the mother in its yearnings, 
tenderness, and pride. I speak of it as 
mother-love instead of parental love. As 
family life becomes intimate and spiritual 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 21 

the love of fathers for their children is to 
develop. 

Then again I have spoken of comrade- 
ship as if it were a masculine affair — and 
indeed it is, in that masculine comrade- 
ship is the stronger and better known — 
but comradeship between women and be- 
tween men and women is developing rap- 
idly. Comradeship between men and wo- 
men has not been possible to any great 
extent under the social conditions prevail- 
ing before the last century — nor indeed 
under other than Christian ideals of pure 
relationships between men and women. 

The same thing is to be said about ro- 
mantic and marital love — the man in love 
who fails to find intellectual and esthetic 
comradeship in the woman has small prom- 
ise of durable happiness with her. Com- 
radeship must be the steady clear light 
that lights up the daily path they travel 
together. 

There are also other developments of 
the love nature, e. g. the love of home and 
country — and the love of God. There are 



22 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

patriots who love their country with a pas- 
sionate depth that makes them wilHng to 
give their Hves for her if need be. 

To some the term love of God is merely 
a figure of speech. To many it is the 
daily food, the very basis of the daily life. 
Some people long for God in a passionate, 
intense way that is not unlike the other 
deepest loves and which in some ways 
transcends them. 

Taking now these great classes of love, 
mother-love, comrade-love and marital- 
love, love of home and country and love of 
God, and abstracting that which they have 
in common, we find what we mean by love. 

Love includes all feelings that find their 
satisfaction in the service and happiness of 
others. 

So far I have been trying to define love, 
or "'heart-hunger," as it is often called. I 
wish now to call to mind the feelings them- 
selves. How does hunger feel? It cannot 
be described. Intense hunger and thirst 
drive other thoughts largely out of mind. 
The taste of water is constantly before one 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 23 

as about the most desirable thing in the 
world. The feeling of it as it touches 
lips and tongue, and as it is swallowed, is 
ravishing. One thinks of the taste of a 
juicy steak or good thick soup, etc. It is 
a yearning that impels powerfully to action, 
that tends to drive other desires away, 
that its own ends may be satisfied. 

Heart-hunger is like stomach-hunger in 
many respects. A mother yearns for her 
baby in a way that is beyond the possi- 
bility of words to describe. And the joy 
that she feels when her baby recognizes 
her and smiles and holds out its little arms 
is equally beyond description. 

To many boys the love of their mothers 
is a deep joy and power. To please her is 
a delight; absence from her is pain. 

The love of a comrade is one of the deep 
abiding joys of life. The longing for 
friendship or for a friend is heartache. 

The death of one near and dear seems 
to tear one — the pain is so intense. All 
other values in life seem to fade away for 
a time. 



24 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

The romantic love between men and 
women has been described as a "consum- 
ing fire'" in its intensity — consuming, be- 
cause all other desires seem to be consumed 
by this one mastering desire. It seems as 
if every moment of every hour was filled 
with her vision — ^her loveliness surpasses 
all other loveliness. She is of more value 
than is all the rest of the world — utterly 
to be desired. To love her is the supreme 
purpose, to be loved by her the supreme 
joy. Life itself is of lesser value than is 
love to the lover — or mother. 

Husband and wife who have lived long 
and truly together, who have shared the 
successes and failures, the pain and the 
pleasures, the work and the play of life, 
are so knit up together that to separate 
them causes wounds that in many cases 
are never healed. 

So with the love of God. It does not 
seem that many young people have much 
of this love experience. It belongs with 
the deep experiences — life's struggles, pains, 
and joys. It, too, is a yearning to love and 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 25 

to be loved. The songs of the poets hav- 
ing spiritual vision are full of this. "My 
soul longeth, even fainteth for Thee, O 
God/' The hymns bare to us the God- 
love of the singers. 

"Behold what wonderful rest is in the 
Supreme Spirit! and he enjoys it, 
who makes himself meet for it. 

Held by the cords of love, the swing of 
the Ocean of Joy sways to and fro; 
and a mighty song breaks forth in song. 

See what a lotus blooms there w^ithout 
water! and Kabir says 

*My heart's bee drinks its nectar.'" 

^ Rabindranath Tagore. 

Heart-hunger is the highest force in the 
world, and in many people is more power- 
ful even than stomach-hunger — whibh 
means that they love the loved one more 
than they love life. 

I have not tried to distinguish between 
loving and being loved, for they seem to 
be inextricably intertwined. The longings 
for love are fully as much one as the other. 
The longings of a man for a woman are as 
much that she may love him as that he 



26 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD^- ' 

may love her: in fact it is difficult to dis- 
tinguisli these two loves. 

Light cannot be described so that a per- 
son blind from birth can form any clear 
concept of it. This is even more true of 
love. We all understand just to the ex- 
tent to which we have had experience. 

Love is the creator of values. It is to 
the lover that the brook babbles, the trees 
sigh, the water glistens, and the stars 
twinkle, for love understands. It is love 
that sees the beauty of the baby, the 
woman, the mother, the comrade. Love 
is the most precious cause and product of 
the social world. I suppose that it is for 
this reason that the seers of the world in 
varying ways say that God is love. 

The Value of Love 

Happiness results from progress toward 
our desires. Wholesomeness — especially 
social wholesomeness, exists when the sat- 
isfactions of our deepest purposes and de- 
sires are beneficial to society as well as to 
ourselves. 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 27 

The most important thing about a man 
is not what he knows, but what he wants. 
A man^s feelings about things are more 
important than his knowledge about them 
— for feeling can acquire knowledge, but 
knowledge cannot acquire feeling — and 
without the driving force of purpose 
or desire or ambition, knowledge is 
sterile. 

The important questions are, what do 
you like, what do you enjoy, what are your 
purposes, your ambitions? Granted pow- 
erful purposes and opportunities, almost 
anything within reason may be accom- 
plished. The roots of the greatest driving 
forces in the world are hunger and love — 
and while these two forces interplay in- 
tricately throughout life, still we may say 
that those activities that look in the main 
to the service of self spring predominantly 
from the hunger motive, while those activ- 
ities that seek their end in the joy and 
happiness of others spring predominantly 
from the love motive. 

The hunger-horn emotions are roughly 



28 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

those which derive their satisfactions in that 
which serves oneself. 

The love-born emotions are roughly those 
which secure their satisfactions through the 
happiness of others. 

The primal diflFerence between the happi- 
ness and rewards from self-service as con- 
trasted with other service lies in the fact 
that the capacity for attainment in self- 
service is limited, as compared with the 
capacity for attainment in the service of 
others. This is w^hy people usually are 
unhappy who merely pursue personal am- 
bition or happiness. 

Then again the pursuit of social happi- 
ness can be carried on to the advantage of 
all, while the pursuit of mere personal 
power or satisfaction is bound to run coun- 
ter to the similar desires of other people. 

These are the two reasons w^hy love so 
ennobles and enriches life. This is why the 
future of our kind depends so largely upon 
the extent to which we genuinely develop 
brotherly love in the w^orld. The other 
desires lead to conflict and inevitably to 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 29 

hatred and war. The great driving powers 
of Ufe are our desires, ambitions, hopes, 
dreams, purposes, and also our hatreds, 
aversions, and angers. That is, driving 
power consists of feelings, or emotions. 
The tools with which our desires work are 
the will and the intellect. You want to 
be an engineer — a doctor — a business man 
— and you plan out how to secure the train- 
ing and opportunity. But the essential 
fact is the steadiness and driving power of 
your desire. 

If love is your dominant motive, you 
will develop your abilities as in no other 
way, for your relations to the world will 
be such as to draw you out, not to repress 
you. You will give happiness and get 
happiness from those you meet and are 
associated with. Life without love is a 
failure — no matter what else it may be. 
Love makes life significant and happy. 
The greatest achievements of life, the high- 
est developments of one's self, and the 
greatest rewards of life, are to be found in 
love and service. The highest develop- 



30 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

ment of human society is possible only 
when love is the dominant motive in human 
action. 

People differ in love capacity as they 
differ in other capacities. Sympathy is 
one of the strands of love. Some people, 
when they see others suffer, even strangers, 
suffer themselves. I do not mean this as 
a figure of speech — these especially sym- 
pathetic people actually suffer physical 
pain: their faces become drawn and w^hite, 
circulation is influenced, cold sweat some- 
times appears, sometimes it goes so far as 
to produce nausea. Some people are at 
the other extreme — the suffering of other 
people does not make them suffer. There 
are pathological cases in which suffering in 
others gives great happiness or even ecs- 
tasy. There is a difference in the make-up 
of people in these respects. But even 
more than the differences due to inheri- 
tance are the differences due to training. 
We can become hardened to pain, we can 
become unsympathetic. Those who by 
sympathetic nature and by good training 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 31 

are able tc enter into the happiness of 
others, have tapped great sources of joy to 
themselves, and also, curiously enough, of 
joy to others. It is almost past compre- 
hension how we enjoy other people's shar- 
ing of our joys with us. In the material 
world, to give is to impoverish oneself. 
In this world of greater reality what we 
give is what we really attain. Till an 
experience is shared with another, it is 
rarely fully one's own. That is, we possess 
what we share and lose what we keep. In 
other words, our natures — our best and 
highest natures — are such that the only 
possible way to secure their greatest de- 
velopment is in and through social life, 
that is, through love. Let us summarize 
what love does. 

Love gives insight — particularly insight 
into the excellencies; love sees beauty to 
which others are blind. We are likely to 
smile at the doting mother, the prejudiced 
friend, or the infatuated lover, but it is 
generally these who discover first in those 
who are loved the qualities that make life 



32 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

significant and are eventually seen by 
others. I have wondered at this, partic- 
ularly at the insight often shown by 
mothers who were distinctly of the non- 
intellectual type. The suggestion that I 
have to offer is this. Love leads one to 
think of the loved one long and hard, to 
turn his qualities and acts over and over 
in one's mind and to give an intensity to 
this study that is never given under other 
conditions. The power of this loving hold- 
ing in mind always operates in one direc- 
tion. It studies each act of the loved one 
in but one way — ^how may each act be 
interpreted to the best advantage of the 
loved one.'^ Such study will, of course, 
discover qualities and traits that are hid- 
den to the casual observer. Hate, too, 
makes us think deeply of the person hated, 
but in this case it is always to discover his 
hateful characteristics. Love and hate al- 
ways seek to justify themselves. 

Love is creative — love tends to make the 
loved one become what the lover sees him 
to be. We are all beings who are in pro- 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 33 

cess of becoming, rather than beings who 
have reached a state of attainment. There 
are so many ways in which we might de- 
velop. When some one loves us and sees 
fine things in us, there is a powerful ten- 
dency to grow toward the ideal in the 
lover's mind. I sometimes think that the 
love of mothers for boys who seem un- 
promising, but who later justify the love 
and pride of their mothers, is itself the 
power that makes the boy develop — that 
it was not so much the insight that saw, 
as it was the love that directed develop- 
ment. There are many of us men who are 
on our feet today because some woman 
loved and believed in us when everyone 
else merely said we were failures, and when 
we ourselves were ready to give up the 
fight. It might have been a mother, a 
sister, a daughter, but most often it is 
one's sweetheart that takes this leading 
r&le. I have known teachers who did this 
for boy after boy — just "believed" them 
into developing fineness of character, when 
everyone else tended to drive them down. 



34 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

To feel adversely critical is to help fix 
failure on the one criticized. To love is 
to help the person to be what you believe 
him to be. Love can call attention to 
faults acceptably, for love is not antag- 
onistic. Love looks for the best — not the 
worst. Test yourself — do you see the 
powers or the weaknesses of those you 
meet? That is, are your critical faculties 
primarily looking for faults or for excel- 
lencies? Not that real love fails to 
see weaknesses, but it sees them under- 
standingly, appreciates the person, and 
endeavors to guard him against the weak- 
ness. We build by giving emphasis to 
the best in ourselves and others, far more 
than by opposing weakness or evil. If the 
good is given encouragement, it tends to 
push out the bad. Mere fault-finding with 
ourselves or with others usually hurts and 
fails of helping. We avoid those who are 
looking for our failures and weaknesses 
and are attracted to those who appreciate 
us, for we feel that those who appreciate 
may have a far deeper insight into our 



THE TWO MAJOR MOTIVES 35 

deficiencies than do those who are primar- 
ily antagonistic or cold. 

Love gives happiness. Love gives happi- 
ness to the one giving it. This is most evi- 
dent in the love of a mother for her newly 
born child. The child does not love the 
mother at first — indeed, cannot differen- 
tiate her from any other part of the envi- 
ronment. Just to love the baby is rapture 
to the mother. The same is true, although 
it is far more complex, with friendship. 
Friendliness is a happy state of feeling. 
It illumines the entire being of the lover 
or friend. To have loved and lost is not 
happiness, but neither is it sadness. Some 
of us who have lost those dear to us treas- 
ure their love as a priceless possession, 
never speaking of it; under no conditions 
would we part even with our memory of 
this love. Tragic love has written much 
of the deepest, truest love-poetry, drama, 
and music. 

Love also gives happiness to the receiver. 
I have seen a mother turn and watch her 
boy who has given her arm a love pat in 



36 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

passing — standing motionless, with tears 
in her eyes, which had a far-oflf look. She 
was evidently swept by a great wave of 
quiet, deep joy at the love just indicated 
by her son. I cannot do better than to 
quote James. "Every Jack sees in his 
own particular Jill charms and perfections 
to the enchantment of which we stolid 
on-lookers are stone-cold. And which has 
the superior view of the absolute truth, he 
or we.'^ Which has the more vital insight 
into the nature of JilFs existence, as a fact.'^ 
Is he in excess, being in this matter a ma- 
niac? Or are we in defect, being victims 
of a pathological anesthesia as regards 
Jill's magical importance.'^ Surely the 
latter; surely to Jack are the profounder 
truths revealed; surely poor Jill's palpitat- 
ing little life-throbs are among the wonders 
of creation, are worthy of this sympathetic 
interest; and it is to our shame that the 
rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack 
realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. 
He struggles toward a union with her inner 
life, divining her limits as manfully as he 



THE TWO :MAJ0R MOTIVES 37 

can, and yet inadequately, too; for he is 
also afflicted with some blindness, even 
here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, 
do not even seek after these things, but 
are contented that that portion of eternal 
fact named Jill should be for us as if it 
were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, 
knows that Jack's way of taking it, so 
importantly, is the true and serious way; 
and she responds to the truth in him by 
taking him truly and seriously, too. May 
the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds 
about either of them again ! T\Tiere would 
any of us be, were there no one willing to 
know us as we really are, or ready to repay 
us for our insight by making recognizant 
return.^ We ought, all of us, to realize 
each other in this intense, pathetic, and 
important way. 

"If you say that this is absurd, and that 
we cannot be in love with everyone at 
once, I merely point out to you that, as 
a matter of fact, certain persons do exist 
with an enormous capacity for friendship 
p-nd for taking delight in other peoples' 



38 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

lives; and that such persons know more 
of truth than if their hearts were not so 
big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill 
affection is not its intensity, but its ex- 
clusions and jealousies. Leave those out, 
and you see that the ideal I am holding up 
before you, however impractical today, 
yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd." 



n 

HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 



n 

HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 

Few people are able to live entirely alone 
for any considerable period. The longing 
for companionship, for friendship, is one 
of the deep longings. The utter loneliness 
of isolation seems impossible to describe. 
Most people are so dependent upon the 
presence of others that they seem to slip 
down to a lower level of existence when 
left alone. Some people and many chil- 
dren are seized with a kind of terror when 
they realize that they are alone. 

Many people in middle life who have 
won position and financial success are rest- 
less and dissatisfied. In some of these 
cases I am confident that I have seen the 
root of the matter when I have realized 
that they were lonely. They had no 
friends in the sense that I have friends. 
The very earnestness with which they had 
41 



42 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

worked had precluded the possibility for 
the time and attention needed for keeping, 
not to say making, friends. Without 
friends one's life seems to be thrown back 
upon itself. What is the use of power, 
influence, wealth, if one has no friends in 
whom and with whom to rejoice and sor- 
row.^ We are primarily social beings, and 
our essential life consists in our relation to 
other people. When these relations fail 
to develop or are severed, it is even more 
of a reality than a figure of speech to say 
that life has been cut off. 

It is, however, not people in the abstract 
that our hearts demand. It is people who 
see us as individuals, who believe in us and 
like us, that we need and long for. I know 
no loneliness so bitter as that in the crowd 
of the city. There are people enough, but 
the more you see the loneher you get. No 
one knows you. You know no one, and 
nobody cares. This is one of the things 
that drive people to suicide or drink — 
nobody cares. It is this care that binds 
society into a coherent structure. We 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 45 

need to be cared about as persons, not as 
unit No. 426, or as No. 84 in Class A. This 
craving to give and receive caring is the 
basis for friendship, which is a personal, 
particular, and individual thing. 

What then is friendship.^ What is a 
friend? 

Words may point the way toward, but 
they cannot encompass any of the deep 
experiences of life — and such is friendship. 
Let us describe, then, one of my friends, 
instead of giving a definition — not that 
this man is a generahzed type. He has 
believed in me for the twenty-seven years 
of our friendship. He has believed in me 
at times when others have not, and 
when my belief in myself had received 
some hard unsettling knocks. His belief 
in me has been one of the strengthening 
and steadying forces of my life. He has 
been loyal to me, and I have felt this when 
I was not with him, as much as when I 
was. He has always seemed to under- 
stand what I meant or was driving at, even 
when I did not succeed or even try to stat^ 



44 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

it. He has shared with me his longings, 
hopes, and struggles. We like to be to- 
gether. I always want to read what I 
have written to him, and to make him read 
his writings to me. I like him. When I 
am in trouble it seems to hurt him, and 
when he is troubled it certainly hurts me. 
He has been a rare friend, in that he has 
let me grow and change my ideas. Most of 
my friends seem to demand that I shall re- 
main what they first knew and liked me 
for. 

Friends as I have known and watched 
them are loyal and respect each other, back 
each other up; they understand and are 
sympathetic, enjoy sharing and pleasing, 
like to be with each other and do things 
together. 

The primary quality of the members of 
a group of men who are to unite in a hunt 
or a fight is loyalty. Lack of great strength 
can be provided for; lack of much intelli- 
gence can be made up for by a leader; lack 
of physical courage, while serious, does not 
prevent a man's being extremely useful in 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 45 

some other position than in the actual 
fighting line — but if you don't know what 
the man is going to do when your back is 
turned, you don't want him at all. He 
would be less dangerous actually in the 
enemy ranks, for at a critical moment he 
might think it to his advantage to join the 
other side — and there is no attack so surely 
fatal as that of the insider. A few men, 
even two or three, who are loyal to each 
other can get results in fighting, hunting, 
productive scholarship, community better- 
ment, such as can never be won by the in- 
dividual. 

The conditions of life among our early 
forefathers were such as to eliminate the 
man who was not loyal to his tribe, who 
would not count tribal victory or safety 
of greater importance than his own life. 
The unloyal men could not stand before 
the loyal men. 

It is the same way today. When you 
go into anything big and hard you must be 
able to depend on the men with you. You 
must know that they will not ^'weaken" 



46 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

at the critical moment. Stop and think 
for a few moments what it is to have with 
you men upon whom you can absolutely 
depend to the limit of their strength and 
ability — who are "true," ''square/' 'Vwith 
you." 

Loyalty, then, we look upon as the pri- 
mary and most splendid quality of man- 
hood, and without loyalty there is no 
friendship. 

This quality of loyalty has seemed to 
some to be the basic quality for the re- 
demption of humankind. Josiah Royce 
in his ''Philosophy of Loyalty" develops 
this thought till it applies to all depart- 
ments of life. 

Loyalty means that a man does not 
stand alone, but as one of a group who are 
knit together by bands stronger than life. 
The day of the solitary man who lives 
primarily for himself has passed; the day 
of cooperative endeavor, of mutual sup- 
port, of social activity, is here. The 
utterly selfish man who needs only him- 
self is as dead as the dodo, and for the same 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 47 

reasons — he failed to meet the conditions of 
survival. 

I have referred to the origin of friend- 
ship and the development of loyalty as 
being masculine. I do not mean to imply 
that woman lacks capacity for friendship 
and loyalty, but merely that at the time 
when survival was emphasizing the mother 
side of woman, it was developing the friend 
side of man. The process is now being 
reversed. The idea of responsible parent- 
hood is now growing among men, while 
friendship and loyalty are growing among 
women. It has never been necessary for 
women to be friendly and loyal, except to 
husband and children. Now that the in- 
terests of the home extend to the com- 
munity, her affections must embrace the 
same Hmits. 

Not only is friendship between women 
developing, but we are seeing, especially 
here in America, straightforward friend- 
ship between men and women. The con- 
ditions and ideals of society have hitherto 
rendered this kind of friendship impossible. 



48 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

except in the unusual case. It is quite 
generally possible now. It is a large for- 
ward-looking process. The interests of the 
community are so large and varied that 
in its service all are needed. This service 
can best be rendered by those who are 
friendly and loyal to each other. 

In the older days, the functions of th^ 
woman related so largely to motherhood 
that other considerations were of minor 
importance. The most encouraging fact 
about marriage today is the increasing 
number of interests that are common to 
husband and wife, and hence the growth 
between them of true comradeship and 
friendship. To be a friend is quite differ- 
ent from being a lover, husband, or father. 
Friendship is now permeating and enrich- 
ing each of these primal relationships. It 
is a great thing for the father to be not 
only a good father, but also a good friend 
to his children — and to be accepted by 
them as such. 

But loyalty and its concomitant respect 
are not enough to account for friendship. 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 49 

There must also be understanding and sym- 
pathy. 

Sympathy is a peculiar emotion, in that 
there are actual changes in bodily condi- 
tions produced by what we perceive goes 
on in those with whom we sympathize — 
the heart beats faster or slower in accord 
with the joy or the sorrow of the friend — 
processes of digestion are altered, for we 
share in his actual joy and sorrow. James 
and Sutherland have fully described these 
remarkable facts. In this deep sense 
friends are a part of each other, and we feel 
tied in a most comforting way when we 
know that they are affected in these ways 
by us and when we respond similarly to 
them. 

For this reason they also find that the 
sharing with one's friend of what one en- 
joys and does ^ihances the enjoyment of 
it. So friends like to be with each other 
to share each other's experiences, and to 
do things together. This is a part also of 
the delight that friends have in pleasing 
each other. 



50 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

Wliat does friendship do? That de- 
pends of course on the nature of the friends 
— but at its best it does many and powerful 
things. 

1. Friendship leads us out beyond our- 
selves. Under the influence of those who 
understand and sympathize, we develop 
power that we did not know we were ca- 
pable of. Friendship seems to keep the 
self living and ready to bud at unexpected 
times and places. A friend is in need, 
and sometimes to help out we do things 
that we previously thought to be impossible. 

2. The fact that people who know us 
intimately believe in us is a great source of 
strength to us in the times of failure and 
depression through which practically all 
of us must go. 

3. We unconsciously struggle to live up 
to the ideals that our friends have of us. 
To disappoint those who believe in you is 
one of the most disheartening things there 
is to do. A large part of conduct is un- 
doubtedly controlled by the ideals that 
our friends have of us. 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 51 

4. Friendship is the most powerful agen- 
cy for the transmission of ideas and ideals. 
We often think of ideas and of ideals as 
primarily intellectual, and to be secured 
by purely intellectual modes. Such cases 
as the following show the inadequacy of 
pure intellectualism in these fields. 

I have often wondered how it came about 
that so many of the most brilliant phys- 
icists in the world were Englishmen. It is 
a well recognized fact that the lead in 
mathematical physics during the past gen- 
eration has been taken by the English 
physicists, and especially by those who be- 
long to what is called the Cambridge 
school, with their center at the Cavendish 
Laboratory at Cambridge, where the pro- 
fessor's chair has been occupied in turn by 
the leading physicists of the country. The 
reason for this preeminence is undoubt- 
edly traceable to the personal relation of 
the workers in the Cavendish Laboratory 
to the professor and perhaps, we might 
say, in no small degree to that typically 
English function — afternoon tea. Every 



52 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

afternoon. Sir J. J. Thomson and his stu- 
dents stop for their tea, and the workers 
in the laboratory come together and chat 
on many matters, but especially on the 
progress of their work. More inspira- 
tion and suggestion have been developed 
through this personal relation to the mas- 
ter than by all his lectures, demonstra- 
tions, and writings, and it is the men of 
the Cavendish Laboratory, inspired by 
"'taking tea with Thomson,'' that have 
reconstructed our ideas of the atom and 
the electron. 

Still — is this so strange and unique? Is 
this not the mode by which character, 
ideals, and inspiration are usually trans- 
mitted.^ This is the regular and favorite 
road for carrying the precious load of our 
social inheritance. Inspirations, ideals, 
hopes, are forces which exist mainly as 
they are embodied in personality — or put- 
ting it reversely, powerful personality ex- 
presses itself in determinations and ideals 
that are spread mainly through the avenues 
of personal friendship. To like or to admire 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 53 

a person makes us far more susceptible to 
the infection of his character. To dislike 
a person makes us largely immune to his 
dynamic effects. 

We think of the thousands to whom 
Billy Sunday speaks with a kind of awe, 
we say of a book that reaches a hundred 
thousand circulation that it must have 
enormous effect, and yet, when we exam- 
ine the great revolutions in human thought 
and action, we find that the largest single 
factor in the spread of the new idea from 
the leader to the mass is accomplished 
through the modest channel of personal 
friendship, rather than through the more 
spectacular methods just illustrated. The 
reason seems to be this: In order that a 
new and great idea may become effective, 
it is more important to saturate a few 
powerful leaders than it is immediately to 
reach the mass. A man even of moderate 
abilities who is aflame with the message is 
more powerful than a thousand who have 
merely listened and given their assent. To 
drop a big rock at one spot into the lake 



64 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

gets more results than that same rock 
ground to sand and sprinkled over the 
entire surface. 

Ideals are like dynamite; they need con- 
tacts. If they can get next to a few real 
people whose lives are made over by them, 
the result will be accomplished, for these 
will reach others till the whole mass moves. 

Christ chose this unspectacular method. 
To be sure, he spoke often to the throng, 
but it was to the transformation of his per- 
sonal friends that he gave his chief thought. 

The history of the leader and his imme- 
diate group of friends is the history of much 
of human progress, for it is one of the major 
channels for social heredity. The great- 
est single value in college is in the personal 
contacts and the men one ties up with. 
Even if the correspondence school could 
give the student a better knowledge of 
every college study than he would get by 
going to college, still it would not give him 
a college education. College education is 
men rather than books. Books and lab- 
oratories are useful and necessary, but 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 55 

the essence is the man — the personnel of 
the faculty, the college, the class, the soci- 
ety, and the team. Even if a man should 
forget every fact that he had learned in 
the class room, he would still show the 
marks of being a college man, if he pre- 
served the effects of his contacts — ^his 
friends and their ideals. That man is for- 
tunate v/ho has some great personality as 
a teacher — it makes little difference what 
his subject is — and has the privilege of a 
personal friendship with him. It is under 
such conditions as these that the transform- 
ing ideals of humankind are transmitted. 

How are friendships formed? Under 
what conditions do they thrive? 

Friendships demand the focussing of the 
attention upon each other — there is no 
friendship without acquaintance. For this 
reason doing things together, having mu- 
tual interests, is a common mode for the 
formation of friendships. There seems to 
be something almost magical in the com- 
mon things of life to draw people together. 
Doing those things together that all the 



56 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

people of all the world have done together; 
experiencing the world-old and world- 
common feel of earth under one's feet, the 
look of green trees, the touch of fresh 
water; cooking in the open; sleeping on 
the ground about the camp fire; carrying 
the pack; standing the strain of the long 
trail — somehow human nature seems to 
come right to the top and look around 
under such conditions as these. You 
somehow don't need to become friends — 
you just are friends, unless you are the 
other kind. Nothing seems to bring one's 
essential nature to the top as do these out- 
door world-old experiences. It seems as if 
sham, insincerity, false courtesy, and other 
pretenses were swept away by the sweat 
that pours from the body and you and he 
stand before each other for what you really 
are, not for what the world thinks, or even 
what you think — but just your real self. 
Under such conditions souls fuse. 

I have seen people get closer together in 
a month's camping than in years of doing 
business or even in college together. 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 57 

I do not mean to imply that this is by 
any means the only road to friendship. 
I just mean that it is the royal road, the 
short road, the happy road, for most peo- 
ple. It is a well-known fact that friend- 
ships are more often formed in athletics 
than in scholarship. 

Anyway, to do things together is the 
first key. Trying to be friendly is rather 
foolish. It is like trying to talk Japanese 
when you don't know the language, just 
because you want to be agreeable. 

In any case friendship must be based 
upon sharing — the sharing of sorrowful as 
well as of happy experiences. If both care^ 
then friendship is forming. 

The capacity for friendship varies as 
does any other capacity, and like any other 
capacity can be cultivated with success. 
There are geniuses in friendship — and also 
idiots. It is a strange thing that some of 
the "friendship idiots'' who always do the 
wrong thing have deep desires for friend- 
ship — they cannot understand that friend- 
ship is a mutual affair, they want people 



58 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

to be friends to them — but the pathology 
of the subject is not for discussion here. 

To develop the capacity for friendship 
takes time and devotion, just as it does to 
develop any other capacity. 

Should friendships be selected or dropped 
deliberately.^ If so, on what basis? 

To select a person and deliberately at- 
tempt to be friends because he has money 
is the prostitution of friendship. The 
same applies to influence. No one wants 
to be*'made friend to" except for his own 
sake. Some years ago I was taking lunch 
with one of the speakers at a convention. 
A young man came to the table, and speak- 
ing to my vis-a-vis, asked permission to 
eat with us, which was of course granted. 
During the conversation I could see that 
the young man was being probed for some 
reason for his coming to the table with us. 
It soon was evident that he had not read 
any of the speaker's books, and that he 
had not really listened to the address. 
At last, in reply to a direct question, he 
said without the least hesitation that he 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 59 

tcK)k every opportunity to meet, and par- 
ticularly to eat with celebrities, for it was 
to his advantage to be able to say to his 
associates when any of his lunch victims 
were mentioned, "Oh yes — I lunched with 
him at the Savoy the last time I was in 
Punkville/' He went on to say how such 
things made for professional advancement! 
The difference between this young man 
and many other people lay not in the act, 
but in their willingness to speak of the act 
truthfully. My friend was a sensitive and 
loving man, and said "yes" to the request 
of the man because he thought there was 
some desire for acquaintance based on his 
writing or speaking. His disgust at being 
sought as a celebrity for the advantage of 
the seeker delighted me. 

The seeking of friendship for any reason 
that you would not state to the person is 
violating a holy thing. Friends are to be 
sought just for the happiness of it. It is 
right to avoid friends who bring out in us 
the sides that are not our best, and to seek 
those with whom we are our truest selves. 



60 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

Friendship and Peesonality 

We each of us inherit from all of our 
ancestors. It is interesting to trace the 
history of one's color of hair and eyes, 
ijhape of nose, height, strength, temper, 
tastes, abilities, or weaknesses. 

An earnest, ambitious person desires to 
develop all of his powers and to fill to the 
full the measure of his possible self. It 
seems to such a one as if there were a dis- 
tant goal toward which he must press — 
that the questions of the day were not con- 
cerning the goal or the road to it, but as 
to how the obstacles in the road could be 
surmounted and progress made as rapidly 
as possible. The facts are far more com- 
plex than this. There lie within each of 
us such an enormous range of possibilities, 
and these possibilities are so many of them 
mutually exclusive, that often the major 
diflSculty consists in selecting the qualities 
that are to be cultivated. 

To "'integrate the personality" means 
to convert the various interests, abilities, 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 61 

purposes, and powers into a working whole, 
a harmonious unit. In dual or multiple 
personalities the separation is so complete 
as to split the consciousness itself. (See 
writings of Morton Prince and others.) 

The results of my personal experience 
with children and adults lead me to the 
conviction that relatively few people dis- 
cover their own best — most unique — abil- 
ities. It is the purpose of school and col- 
lege to give to each the precious spiritual 
inheritance of our kind — hence it proceeds 
step by step systematically to cover this 
world of knowledge, and must by its very 
nature tend to repress in the individual 
those outcroppings which distinguish and 
separate him from the others. It is the 
class that is being taught, rather than the 
individual that is being discovered. All 
of this is necessary. I speak of it to show 
that something else is equally necessary — 
some process by which those abilities and 
traits by which one differs from other peo- 
ple may be developed. 

It is often a surprise to discover what a 



62 THE DYNAMIC OP MANHOOD 

variety of friends some people have. One 
man I know is a personal and close friend 
to one of the most learned philosophers of 
the day, a little red-headed imp of a girl 
eleven years old, a materialistic chemist, 
a keen money-mad business man, a tramp, 
a poet, a half-breed Indian mechanic, a 
school teacher, an advertising man, etc. 

He has all these friends, because he finds 
within himself that which genuinely re- 
sponds to each one. Some of these re- 
sponses of his came as a surprise, for the 
very fact that he was interested revealed 
new qualities of his own to himself. 

Owing to the power of sympathy to stir 
and secure bodily as well as psychic re- 
sponse, friendships are one of the chief 
powers in the discovery of one's self. The 
contagion of one who loves poetry or na- 
ture, mathematics or philosophy, boats or 
engines, tools, tramping, history, research, 
is as definite as the contagion of measles or 
smallpox. It won't take unless you have 
the capacity, and you can't tell whether 
or not you have the capacity till you have 



HUNGER FOR A FRIEND 63 

been exposed — and the exposure by being 
with a friend who has the new power or 
enthusiasm is the most certain of any dis- 
covery method. 

Of almost equal importance to the dis- 
covery of one's self, is the keeping alive of 
parts of oneself that are of value, but 
which are so far outside of one's daily 
required thought and activity as to be 
deprived of that attention which is neces- 
sary if they are to grow. Our friendships, 
then, may be the means of discovering and 
of keeping alive ever new and enlarging 
powers and relations to the world. 

I have stated all this in terms of bene- 
fit to oneself. The converse is equally 
true. To see one's friend respond to your 
enthusiasm and to "take" the contagion 
of your inspiration is one of the solid joys 
and rewards of life. It is one of the stim- 
uli to progress to get that which will ce- 
ment friendship by arousing new enthusi- 
asm over some new and common interest. 

Still, one does not do any of these things 
for advantage. Advantage is but inci- 



64 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

dental to the great fact — the inscrutable 
deep experience of friendship; the further 
one goes in attempting to put this experi- 
ence into words, the less real does the real- 
ity seem, for what is described is not the 
substance, the essence — it is but the inci- 
dent. 

Friendship, comradeship, may thus be 
described as the great power which jBrst 
seized upon the male and through the de- 
velopment of loyalty made a social world 
possible. Through its myriad forms of 
interaction it discovers power, gives cour- 
age, ties hearts, controls lives, and yet its 
chief significance is in itseK and not in 
what it does or gives to the individual. 
It is value in itself rather than in what it 
bestows. 

It is a great thing to live so as to com- 
mand the confidence, respect, and friend- 
ship of those who know and understand. 



Ill 

HUNGER FOR WOMAN 



Ill 

HUNGER FOR WOMAN 

By the term hunger for woman I mean 
those feelings which normally find their sat- 
isfactions in the nature of woman. This 
refers to mind^ heart, and character, as well 
as to body. It includes all those incom- 
pletenesses that find their fulfilment in 
woman, for it is the man and woman to- 
gether that form the social unit. 

A person in love may act almost as a 
hypnotized person does — acting, thinking, 
feeling nothing but the flood of love and 
desire that pours through him. Asleep or 
awake, working or playing, one feeling, 
one desire, is ever before the heart. 

Love may come with the suddenness of 

a summer storm. This means, I take it, 

that the body and heart are already "set 

up'^ for love — so that with exactly the 

right stimulus the whole being is in the 

fever of love. 

67 



68 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

The state of being in love may last for 
years, or may be but a passing episode. 
Technical descriptions of sex-love and its 
phenomena are foreign to the purpose of 
this book. Let me turn, therefore, to sex 
hunger and indicate some classes of ways 
in which it may seek and find its more or 
less complete satisfactions. 

1. A man may love and marry a woman 
and discover year after year that she is 
increasingly attractive, that she grows in 
tenderness and beauty of life, that com- 
radeship with her becomes increasingly 
vital. He finds that the physical elements 
of sex, while basic, are but the foundation 
for the real structure of beauty. He de- 
lights in the way she looks at things. He 
brings each new thing, each new book, or 
picture, or friend to her to see how she 
reacts — that is, she is feminine. He finds 
that no one appreciates him as his wife 
does — I do not mean a blind, stupid praise 
— I mean real intelligent appreciation; she 
understands his failures as well as his suc- 
cesses. She plays a team game with him 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 69 

in relation to the community. He finds 
her love for the children to be beautiful 
beyond words. All this is sex love, but 
it is all-round sex love. 

2. Sex hunger can be satisfied as a purely 
physical solitary pleasure. In proportion 
as this becomes a confirmed habit, the 
possibility and inclination for other ex- 
pression of sex hunger lessens. Such sat- 
isfaction is partial and perverted, and les- 
sens, or even prevents the higher forms of 
experience. It is like short circuiting an 
electric current and thus depriving the 
engine of its power. 

3. Sexual "satisfaction" can be secured 
by purchase or otherwise as an end in 
itseK — the gratification of self on a purely 
selfish basis. The more this is done, the 
less power there is for the deeper things of 
sex, which are to be found on the romantic 
and spiritual levels. 

4. A man may have successive amours 
with women in which sex feeling may be 
intense and beautiful, but it shortly dies 
down, and each experience leaves him 



70 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

poorer in his estimation of high things. 
Such people seem most likely to think that 
they have been ''disillusioned/' that the 
great, high, long-abiding love is a myth, 
and that after all love is at its basis only 
physical attraction — a pretty face, a grace- 
ful form being but the lure set by nature to 
perpetuate the species. In proportion as 
amours are numerous, so-called disillusion 
is complete. What probably happens in 
successive amours is that the mind and 
heart are so filled with the temporary and 
partial satisfactions that the great ends 
are no longer felt as realities. Such a per- 
son has expended in his many little loves 
the capacity that might have been a great 
love. 

We saw how manliness and womanliness 
develop under the influence of the inter- 
stitial cells in the reproductive glands. 
The rejoicing of men and women in each 
other is greatest on these higher levels, 
People who know sex, sex hunger, and sex 
passion only on the physical level know but 
little of the deeper realities of hun\an nature. 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 71 

When a man needs and longs for the 
appreciation that a sympathetic, inteUi- 
gent woman can give him, he is longing for 
that which is feminine. Men and women 
need each other on all levels. Wholesome 
life is not to be carried on in any other 
way. Even if physical sex were obliter- 
ated, the difference between masculine and 
feminine feelings about things would be as 
important as they are now. 

Sex is power — if properly handled it may 
be made to do splendid work in the world. 
It may, however, be set off in mere fire- 
works or it may go off in explosions that 
wreck the structure of character and soci- 
ety. For in itself it is neither good nor 
bad, neither moral nor immoral. Every- 
thing depends on how we use it. 

Sex at first is plastic. It can be modeled 
into forms of power and beauty, or into 
the commonplace, the ugly, and the revolt- 
ing. 

The forms which it shows in the indi- 
vidual are due not so much to inheritance 
as to the atmosphere that is a matrix for 



72 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

it before sex ripens — as well as to the forms 
given to it while it is yet young and plastic. 
High attainments in matters of love and 
character are not to be reached without 
the same devoted, intelligent study that is 
given to mathematics or any other great sub- 
ject. Mere mathematical ability will not 
lead one to understand the calculus with- 
out study, and mere sex hunger, powerful 
though it be, gives no guarantee that the 
hunger will be satisfied in ways that lead 
to great living. 

Attainments in friendship and love of 
a high character are no more to be attained 
by chance or inheritance than is a scholar's 
knowledge of Sanskrit. Think and do 
something every day for some one. 

Love is to be cultivated by the same 
intelligent processes by which one acquires 
any other power. Sex refers to the phys- 
ical, emotional, esthetic, religious, and so- 
cial respects, in which there are differences 
between men and women. Sex hunger 
includes the desire for communion in all 
the respects in which there are sex differ- 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 73 

ences. It is manhood in its broadest total- 
ity, finding its complement in an equally 
extensive woman nature. 

The approach to the physical expression 
of affection is properly through the love of 
the charm, attractiveness, loveableness, 
and bravery of character in the beloved. 
There is hardly anything that kills love in 
a woman so quickly as being approached 
merely on the physical side. It does not 
seem possible that so few married men 
know this basic fact about women. Wo- 
man needs, demands, genuine pure love 
for her spiritual self as well as for her body, 
then she can give her entire self in return. 
It is not by chance that girls love romantic 
love stories — this is the right approach to 
the whole subject. 

Development of the Sex Instinct- 
Feeling 

By instinct-feelings and instinct reac- 
tions I mean those feelings which are nat- 
ural, that do not have to be acquired. It 
is instinctive to feel fear in the dark, to 



74 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

feel anger or fear when we are struck — 
that is, these are instinct-feelings (instinc- 
tive feelings). 

Instincts may show themselves at birth, 
e. g., crying — in which case we call them 
^'connate.'* Love is not connate; e. g., 
a kitten develops the instinct-feeling of 
pursuit quite a little after birth. Such 
instincts are called "deferred." The in- 
stinct of love is a ''deferred" instinct. A 
newly born baby does not love. 

Some instincts are born complete. Some 
are incomplete. Sucking is an illustration 
of the complete type. Such instinctive 
acts need no practice. These acts are per- 
formed as well the first time as they will 
ever be. They need no education or prac- 
tice. A spider spins its web by instinct — 
a young spider spins as good a web as an 
old one. Love and sex desire are instinc- 
tive, but the particular forms through 
which they express themselves, and espe- 
ciallj^ their spiritual, emotional, and sen- 
suous associations depend largely upon ex- 
perience and education. Sex love is thus 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 75 

a deferred, incomplete instinct-feeling; 
hence its characteristics largely depend 
upon how it is first developed. 

The conditions surrounding the develop- 
ment of the sexual life are thus of the ut- 
most importance, for they form an "at- 
mosphere" for the entire life. 

If one's early atmosphere and stories 
about sex are unclean, the subject will 
probably influence character during life — 
that is, being an incomplete instinct-feel- 
ing, it tends to retain throughout life the 
form in which it first grew to completion. 
No subsequent beautiful experience can 
completely eradicate and purify the feel- 
ing. On the other hand, those who secured 
their sexual atmosphere from confidential 
conversations with their parents, and whose 
early sex feeling and experiences are pre- 
dominantly spiritual, romantic, and poet- 
ical in their nature, have established a 
"pure" attitude which will tend to make 
them loathe the vile or the grossly sensual. 

Freud and Jung have opened up new 
fields for us in this connection. The way 



76 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

in which sex life develops at and after 
puberty, the atmosphere which creates its 
tone and ideals, are made long before pu- 
berty arrives. During the early years of 
childhood the stories, the repressions, the 
silences concerning sex make an extraor- 
dinary complex, which is partly driven 
below consciousness. The child is just as 
eager to have sex experiences as he is to 
know about and to experience anything 
else. In the sex field, he finds only repres- 
sion — not only repression in acts, but re- 
pression of words. His deeper nature is 
often stirred by the very steps taken to 
keep him in ignorant innocence. Under 
these conditions what he does know is al- 
most certain to be distorted and probably 
grotesque. He cannot by any power with- 
in his reach secure satisfactory knowledge. 
The conscientious child will learn to turn 
away from and not think of these things, 
particularly if he has had some experience 
that he may imagine is hurtful or shock- 
ing. But driving these ideas and feelings 
out of consciousness does not drive them 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 77 

out of being — they retreat into the sub- 
cellars of human life and there grow. They 
often become distorted and later on appear 
in various objectionable forms, apparently 
quite unrelated to their original cause. 
This I shall treat more fully later. That 
is, the years before puberty largely deter- 
mine the direction of the development of 
sex life when it is to become dominant. 

Because the sexual desire is an "incom- 
plete instinctive feeling"' it needs develop- 
ment. This is brought about normally 
through the imagination, rather than 
through physical experience. 

People often wonder why boys are so 
devoted to the type of story in which the 
maiden is captured and the lover performs 
impossible deeds of daring before she is 
rescued and marries the hero. These were 
the themes of the "dime novels" of the 
boys of an older generation. The love that 
won out was always of the pure, high- 
minded sort. The villain was always the 
man of low ideals. The romantic story is 
equally appealing to the girl. 



78 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

Stories of a good type of this character 
are powerful factors in laying the basis for 
a wholesome sexual life. That is, the 
imagination is a large factor in the develop- 
ment of the sex instinct-feelings and in the 
preparation for wholesome adult sexual life. 

I have observed that young people who 
do not have an adequate supply of vivid, 
imagination-stirring, hero, and romantic 
love stories will seek and find such stories 
for themselves. Often such will deal with 
sex on other than an ideal basis and so in- 
calculable harm be done to the developing 
imagination. Sexual suggestion has enor- 
mous power. 

The sex stories that are told among boys 
and girls who have not already been for- 
tified by suitable knowledge and high ideals 
are thus usually damaging. These are the 
channels through which boys get their 
early sex imaginings, atmosphere, and 
information. These are unwholesome 
sources. Thus sex becomes, in their minds, 
primarily a matter of certain secret phys- 
ical relationships rather than of beautiful 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 79 

romance and love. The reticence of par- 
ents appears to lend color to this view. 
In this way sex and its experiences are 
identified primarily with the body, with 
acts that all good people seem to be 
ashamed of and try to avoid. Sex, as they 
see it, stands for temptation — shame — to 
be spoken of with apology, to be avoided 
in decent conversations if possible. 

It is not too much to say that there is 
no way by which sex can be so completely 
converted into a force for evil and pre- 
vented from being a force for good as by 
having its development occur under the 
imaginative treatment of the unclean- 
minded. It is in this way associated with 
the worst people, and by this means the 
worst things are known. It thus becomes 
base rather than noble, fleshly rather than 
spiritual, a temptation to evil rather than a 
beckoning vision of the beautiful. The 
first years of ripening sex largely deter- 
mine its life atmosphere. The right de- 
velopment of sex instinct-feeling thus in- 
volves: 



80 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

1. That all early information shall come 
from clean loving sources, otherwise the 
whole matter will be permanently warped. 
This means that it should come from the 
parents before it could come from other 
sources, and that it shall be so adequate 
that other information will be seen at once 
to be either false or partial. All of chil- 
dren's questions should be answered. No 
one, or even a dozen answers are adequate 
on this or any other profound theme. 

2. That an abundance of stirring, ro- 
mantic stories shall be available. Oppor- 
tunities should be allowed for doing ro- 
mantic, venturesome things for mother, 
sister, or other girls. 

Starting Wrong 

Children often start wrong through ig- 
norance and curiosity, as well as by the ex- 
ample of other children. Young people who 
combine the use of alcohol and spooning are 
very likely to get started wrong. The al- 
cohol tends to lessen the controlling power of 
the higher centers, while the physical con- 



« 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 81 

tact brings sex to the imagination. Hence 
sex on a physical level often gets control 
and that is what cannot be undone — for 
it lives in memory and stirs the imagina- 
tion. In this way the battle is often lost 
before the boy or man knows that it has 
really begun. Comparatively few take 
the first wrong step deliberately. 

The serious sex battles are usually en- 
deavors to recover ground that was lost 
by a surprise attack at night. The en- 
emy has entrenched himself in memory 
and captured theimagination. The problem 
of dislodging an enemy that is so en- 
trenched is often diflScult. Few men find 
it hard, however, to hold their ground, pro- 
vided they are not taken by surprise. 
Even when the enemy has been driven out 
and the practices of a normal life rein- 
stated, the pictures painted on the mem- 
ory and the training of the imagination 
remain. 

Spooning should be thought about in the 
light which was first thrown upon the 
origin of the emotions by James in his 



82 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

"Principles of Psychology/' He shows, 
for example, that action is a part of the 
emotion process, and that if the action can 
be stopped the emotion is largely con- 
trolled. He refers to fear that would make 
one run. "If," he says, "you can control 
the running so that you stand quietly, you 
have the emotion itself controlled and only 
partly developed.'* That is, the act tends 
to arouse the emotion, as well as the emo- 
tion tending to arouse the act. 

Spooning may be called a series of acts 
which produce certain pleasurable sensa- 
tions and an awareness of the physical 
qualities and response of the other person. 
These acts — caressing, holding hands, kiss- 
ing, fondling — tend to arouse physical 
passion and desire. The response of the 
girl indicating that she is stirred is the 
most powerful stimulant to passion that 
there is. It fills the mind with imaginings. 

Spooning is pleasurable just because it 
stirs sex feeling. Its avenue is through 
the body and is hence most dangerous, 
except when sex feeling should be stirred 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 83 

on the physical level. Dancing can be, 
and often is, done in a way to bring to con- 
sciousness the physical contact, and, when 
so done, should be classed with spooning. 

Illicit Love, Secrecy, and Fear 

There are vast differences between pri- 
vacy and secrecy. A man's intimate rela- 
tions with his wife are private. They are 
not secret, for all know what such rela- 
tions are. Any other sex expressions must, 
however, be secret, for they cannot safely 
be made public. An incendiary must keep 
his acts secret. We recognize not only 
the right, but even the obligation of pri- 
vacy. We do not recognize the right to 
secrecy in the sense in which I am using it. 

Few feelings more surely undermine 
character, health, and conduct than does 
fear. Illicit sexual experiences are like 
bombs underneath one's house. If they 
explode they will wreck home, happiness, 
and often usefulness. They can never be 
taken away, their possibility of destructive 
activity lives long. The fear of being 



84 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

found out is a fear that sticks to one night 
and day and colors everything in Kf e. The 
higher and more spiritual the person, the 
deeper the suffering. 

The man who plants such fear in the 
heart of a woman has done her more dam- 
age than if he had killed her outright. 

Origin and Use of Sex 

Things are to be understood not only 
by their origin, but also, and perhaps more 
fully, by what they are and what they are 
becoming. When and how sex came about 
we do not know. Undoubtedly, however, 
it was at some time when life was most in- 
tense in the great slimy ooze at the margin 
of land and water. When two cells from 
different families unite, their offspring have 
the advantage of the hereditary traits of 
both families. Thus the possibility of 
some having the best combination of traits 
is increased by having two instead of one 
parent. One parent generation (asexual) 
introduces no new elements into the strain. 
It merely subdivides. Among those who 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 85 

have the greater variations brought about 
by biparental origin will be some with an 
inferior combination of traits — who will 
perish, and some with a superior combina- 
tion of traits. The descendants of these 
will prevail over the others. This method 
of propagation is an aid in adjusting the 
species to any change of environment. 

In the course of time the members of a 
colony formed the fusion of a cell by con- 
jugation, adhered to each other, and spe- 
cialized their activities, thus subdividing 
the labor of living. Those on the outside 
served to protect (skin) and to guard 
(sense organs). Those on the inside did 
the digestion of food. Such a colony lived 
just as did the colony spoken of in the pre- 
ceding paragraph, and in the course of 
time lost its vitality. 

Some of the cells, however, did not spe- 
cialize. They were set aside and did not 
participate in any of the activities of the 
organism. These cells lost none of the 
all-around ability through the specializa- 
tion in which all of the other cells engaged. 



86 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

When one of these cells met a similar cell 
from another similar organism, it fused, 
left the parent, and built up a new colony 
or organism — these are called the repro- 
ductive cells. 

This is a diagrammatic sketch of the 
origin of sex. 

In the earliest days of unicellular life 
there was no such thing as natural death. 
Each amoeba, for example, comes to its 
natural end by dividing into two. This 
process went on indefinitely. At this stage 
of life, death by catastrophe was common, 
but there was no death as a natural and 
inevitable process. At the colony stage 
vitality is ultimately lost, and the death 
of the colony occurs. But by conjugation 
the colony has started many other colonies 
before it dies. So death arose. 

The attraction that leads the reproduc- 
tive cells of the two organisms to seek each 
other and to unite has developed into what 
we call sexual, or passionate love. 

Another fact is to be noted. The mul- 
tiplying amoebse did not develop into 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 87 

higher forms of life. To do this it was 
apparently necessary to have cells that 
would work together and specialize, even 
though in so doing they lose their ability 
to reproduce new individuals. Hence the 
unspecialized cells had to be set aside to 
preserve the life of the race. Sex was, 
therefore, one of the factors in the develop- 
ment of all forms of higher life. Through 
mating somehow came about increase in 
vitality, and also variations — the fittest 
surviving. 

Historically, therefore, sex restores vital- 
ity, perpetuates the race, aids in the dis- 
tribution of variations, and hence is basic 
in evolution. It also brought death into 
being, and made it inevitable. 

Each of us, accordingly, may be regarded 
as a colony of cells developed by fusion 
from a parent cell formed by fusion of two 
cells. This colony sets aside certain cells 
for reproductive purposes, but the rest of 
the cells build up the individual. These 
cells continue to reproduce and replenish 
their ranks by fission, but in the course of 



88 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

seventy years or so vitality lessens, the 
body becomes old, and dies. These col- 
onies must live, if they can, and must also 
reproduce. The motive to live is perhaps 
best summed up as hunger, the motive to 
reproduce as love. Both have been per- 
petuated because of their survival values. 

So much for the origin of sex. Love has 
its development through the fact that it 
leads to conjugation. Those who do not 
love do not reproduce, and hence are elim- 
inated from the stream of life. 

Mother-love owes its development to 
similar causes. The more loving mothers 
will care for their offspring better than the 
less loving. Hence loving mothers will be 
most likely to bring up their offspring to 
adult life. Love makes a mother willing 
to sacrifice herself if it will benefit the 
child. Mother-love is a steady love. 

The woman needs protection and food 
during her child bearing and rearing period. 
Hence if her husband is a man who will 
defend and feed his family, even at great 
cost of danger and pain to himself, he will 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 89 

stand a better chance of having his chil- 
dren reach adult life than do men who have 
less of this love. The family thus has 
grown out of the needs of the child. 

The man, to fight successfully, must be 
willing to subordinate other interests in 
time of need and fight with the tribe against 
its enemies. If it comes to the worst, he 
must stand by the tribe even at the cost 
of the family. Tribes composed of such 
men will overcome and wipe out tribes 
having a lesser degree of social cohesion. 

This loyalty to the tribe or gang is com- 
radeship. This is the reason for the dif- 
ference in the emphasis upon love in the 
two sexes — ^the man, stressing loyalty to 
comrade, the woman, loyalty to children. 
This may be why on the whole men are 
more interested in the community than are 
women, while women are more interested 
in the family. Hence also may be the 
reason why on the average men work better 
on committees than do women. It is in- 
teresting to note that the great team games 
— baseball, football, rowing, cricket, hock- 



90 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

ey, polo — are masculine games. In fact 
till the present generation no team game 
has ever been played by women anywhere 
in the world on a large scale. 

The need of women and children for 
long steady care and protection has tended 
to preserve the monogamic or chaste wo- 
man rather than her more promiscuous 
sister, for the more chaste one would on 
the whole be the best cared for and hence 
have the best chance of standing the sur- 
vival test. Women are more chaste than 
men, because unchastity strikes at the root 
of the family. Men are more loyal to each 
other, for disloyalty strikes at the roots of 
the tribe. It has never been as necessary 
that men be chaste as that they be loyal, 
nor that women be loyal to the tribe as 
that they be chaste and good mothers. 

It is interesting to note that conditions 
have changed. The interests of the home 
now demand community action, hence 
team work and loyal citizenship are being 
asked from women. The preservation of 
the state demands "clean" homes, hence 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 91 

man must be chaste and monogamic. 
These two kinds of love, one of which has 
been stressed in the man, one in the woman, 
are now demanded from both. These are 
the two basic morahties. 

Women have never needed to be loyal 
to each other — they have needed only to 
be loyal to their husbands. Men have never 
needed to be loyal to their wives — they 
have only had to be loyal to their tribes. 

Men and women alike are now struggling 
to acquire those quaUties of devotion to 
tribe or family which have been developed 
primarily in connection with the other sex. 
The direction of this present movement is 
shown by the fact that civilization is devel- 
oping a fuller and richer range of feeling 
between men and women. The rich life 
often seen today is historically rather new. 
Comradeship between men and women is 
recent. The more highly civilized the 
race, the higher the estimation in which 
women and children are held. Sex life is 
becoming richer by having added to it a 
constantly richer spiritual content. 



92 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

There is nothing more important about 
sex and marriage than its relation to the 
development of love, love between men 
and women, love between parents and chil- 
dren, and love between comrades — three 
fundamental kinds of love. 

How may the sex life be so conducted as 
most fully and wisely to develop the spir- 
itual life? 

There are those who say that, because 
sex is primarily a reproductive matter, sex 
and sex activity should occur only with 
the intention and expectation of producing 
children. The rest of us say that there 
are two uses of sex — to produce children 
and to develop love and character. We 
believe that love between husband and 
wife is aided by the physical expression of 
passionate love, and that this development 
of love is the adequate reason for love in- 
timacies during periods when it would be 
wrong to produce children. 

Wheat is one of the great staple foods 
for humankind. Wheat is seed. It mat- 
ters not so much that it is seed as that it 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 93 

is food. It would meet our purposes for 
food just as well if the stalk of the wheat 
were nutritious, rather than the seed. We 
are not violating nature when we take 
wheat which was developed for reproduc- 
tive purposes and use it to nourish the 
human body. 

Similarly love arose as an essential fac- 
tor of the reproductive process. Love 
first became deep and spiritual in the love 
of mothers for their children. Because 
sex love arose to meet the needs of repro- 
duction is no reason why we should not 
use these same processes, human seed- 
bearing, to nourish the soul and the spir- 
itual life. That is, sex and sex activity are 
to be viewed and used for spiritual pur- 
poses, quite independently of their use for 
reproductive purposes. 

The function of love and sex is therefore 
to increase the quality and quantity of life 
in the world. 

Personality is the psychic characteristic 
of the colony of cells, that is, the individ- 
ual. It is as deeply related to the char- 



94 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

acter of the relationships between the cells 
as it is to the make-up of the cells them- 
selves. Each cell may have some sort of 
conscious life of its own, so far as we know. 
Each of us individuals is composed of a 
vast number of specialized cells which grow 
from the reproductive cells like a great 
cluster. This cluster dies, but the unend- 
ing line of life passes on through the con- 
tinued mating of the reproductive cells. 
These form an unbroken chain, from the 
time life arose to the time it shall end, by 
the same primeval method, always the 
parent cell dividing into two parts. This 
is what we mean by the "continuity of the 
germ plasm'' which carries in its as yet 
unknown structure all of inheritance, just 
as society in its structure, customs, and 
traditions, contains all of human attain- 
ment and spiritual life. 

Love and Passion 

Does passionate love contribute to the 
development of a loving nature? This is 
a pivotal point. It is a most difficult ques- 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 95 

tion to answer, because under some con- 
ditions it evidently does, while in others 
it evidently does not, and in many the in- 
fluence is confused and neutral. The real 
question is this one — under what condi- 
tions does passion make for spiritual life? 
It is the common experience of mankind 
that passion, enjoyed as an end in itself, 
is definitely anti-spiritual. It makes for 
coarseness of feeling, selfishness, and de- 
basement of regard for women. On the 
other hand, when passionate embraces 
come as a mode for the expression of deep 
love — passionate love, then such expression 
augments love, for it is a most intimate and 
tender expression of giving oneself to 
another. The spiritual nature of this won- 
derful world of ours is seen by many most 
clearly in love passionately expressed. 
Such love expression enhances one's sense 
of the beautiful. The sky is bluer, the 
grass greener, living things are more glad; 
friends are dearer, work more worth while, 
living more splendid, because of it. It 
makes one more tender and thoughtful. 



9G THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

Love of this kind influences character 
wholly for good and for spiritual things. 

The problems of sex are not to be solved 
by so treating the young that they shall 
not have desire, even if we could, but by 
so treating them that they shall come to 
be dominated by the fact that sex is a mode 
for the affections — that women can never 
be bought, or owned, or used. Man has 
rarely known the diarm of womanliness 
because he has been so enamored with 
woman's body as to be blind to her higher 
beauties. He has rarely conceived of her 
in this spiritual sense. 

Monogamy and Character 

The history of society is the history of 
controlling individual desires and tenden- 
cies in those respects which are injurious to 
society, and of developing these tendencies 
which make for social wholesomeness. 
Here is the age-long conflict between the 
individual and society. It is perfectly 
natural for a man to take anything he 
wants, but if that thing is the property of 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 97 

another man it is equally natural for the 
other man to defend his property and per- 
haps to kill the thief. Both of these acts 
are anti-social. Hence during the ages we 
have lessened murder and theft by in- 
dividuals, and are now entering upon a new 
phase of international development. Dur- 
ing the past decade international con- 
science has come partly to consciousness. 
War will be abolished and the theft of 
countries will in the course of time be stopped 
— for such is the history of conscience. 

The history of society with reference to 
matters of sex is most complex. Society 
(as distinguished from the individuals that 
make up society, just as the bricks of a 
building are to be distinguished from the 
building itseK), society is getting rid of cer- 
tain sex activities among its members and 
is developing others. For example, it is 
an increasingly serious matter for a man 
to force or seduce a woman. The man who 
is a rake runs foul of society today as he 
did not even a hundred years ago. So- 
ciety is curbing unbridled passion — ^is mak- 



98 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

ing it increasingly hard for the man who 
measures his sex life by the frequency and 
variety of his sex experiences. 

On the other hand society is increasingly 
advancing the man who loves his fellows, 
who is high and pure minded. Men in 
public life can no longer be openly unclean. 

What I have said so far is merely to in- 
dicate the direction of the facts and argu- 
ments which lead and account for my be- 
lief that the world is growing towards the 
practice, as well as the theory of having 
sexual love restricted to one person — that 
is, to monogamy. This, I take it, is not 
because it is desired to limit the power of 
so beneficial a thing as pure love, but be- 
cause it is becoming to be realized that sex 
love is most powerful and beneficial when 
flowing through a single channel. From 
personal observation and from reading, I 
am led to think that even sex passion is a 
more sustained and highly oriented factor 
in life among civilized peoples than it is 
among primitives. The primitives tend 
more to the explosive type. With prim- 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 99 

itive people life is more direct than with 
us. We augment desire by long circuit- 
ing it over the whole field of esthetic ex- 
perience. So it is not that sexual love 
may be limited, but that its full power may 
be developed, that the world is steadily 
advancing toward this ideal. The love 
that expends itself on many can never 
reach its greatest power or happiness, be- 
cause the deepest experiences of life are 
to be found only under the conditions of 
the greatest intimacy. To know another 
human being in all of the moods and tenses 
is a life occupation, but only in this way 
can the richness of human life be developed. 
The depths of the human heart are to be 
discovered by the intimate knowledge of 
the one, rather than by superficial acquain- 
tance with the many. Could we know one 
person fully and completely, human na- 
ture would lie exposed to view. 

The man who ^' knows women" through 
a multiplicity of experiences does not 
know the essence of womanhood at all. 
He has probably never seen that there are 



100 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

sacred chambers, unknown perhaps even 
to the woman herself, which are opened 
only by long and devoted love, through 
the sharing of work and play, happiness 
and sorrow, success and defeat. This 
knitting up of two lives into a deep part- 
nership where all of life is a sharing, where 
great comradeship is the result, is not what 
the man secures who "'knows women.'' 
He is, by the very fact of the variety of 
his experiences, prevented from having the 
deepest experiences with any. 

The mere sharing of sexual pleasure does 
not acquaint one with the nature and 
scope of marriage. It is the intimate shar- 
ing of the whole of life's experience that 
makes for this deep comradeship. The 
deepest love and passion is so engrossing 
that there is no room for the many. The 
man who rushes up each little ascent will 
never get the great all-inclusive view. The 
mountain top is reserved for those who 
give themselves to it with single heart and 
utter devotion. 

Love is one of the most powerful sources 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 101 

of growth. We are often surprised at the 
constant discovery of enlarged power, 
views, or charm in the ones we love. Peo- 
ple may say that our love deceives us, but 
in many cases it is the stimulus of love that 
produces the growth. Thus long years of 
love and deep experience together are 
necessary in order to grow to one's biggest 
self. Superficial experience does not give 
this. It seems to tend the other way. 

Growth comes from two sources — native 
capacity, together with stimulus and oppor- 
tunity. Love furnishes stimulus and oppor- 
tunity. But even under the best condi- 
tions attainment is impossible without cor- 
responding capacity. The important thing 
for the individual to remember is that the 
direction in which one is going is more im- 
portant than the distance one goes. It 
is the fight, the struggle itself, that has 
supreme significance. A consistent mo- 
nogamist, who never loved another, merely 
because he was too poorly endowed, is not 
the ideal. He is not th^ kind that scales 
the heights. 



102 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

I do not forget that there are great men, 
men who have blessed the world with the 
splendid use of their powers, who have not 
lived by the ideal I am stating. I am not 
giving a "counsel of perfection" which can 
result only in discouragement and failure. 
I am stating facts when I say that the 
world is progressing toward monogamy; 
that sex achievement is not to be measured 
by the frequency, violence, or variety of 
one's sex experience; that the deepest 
things in love and in life are won only 
slowly through the growth that comes by 
long continued intimate experience of life 
at its fullest. 

There are those who believe that law 
and society should not be concerned with 
one's intimate affairs, except when they 
result in the rearing of children. What- 
ever the ultimate condition may be in 
these respects, I believe that the power 
for clean living will more and more come 
as an inner necessity as well as a con- 
dition increasingly demanded by public 
opinion, for it is important to the wel- 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 103 

fare both of the individual and of society. 
Were I discussing monogamy as opposed 
to polygamy from the social aspects, I 
should indicate that the welfare of the 
children was the cause of the family — that 
marriage grew out of the need of the fam- 
ily for food and protection, and that the 
children need the father in certain respects 
as much as they need the mother. The 
family, as we know it, does not exist under 
polygamy. Dr. Ballict states it in a 
personal letter as follows: ''In speaking 
of monogamy you might emphasize the 
rights of the children to the affections and 
care of the parents. These rights can be 
realized completely only in the monogamic 
family. The family might be said to be 
the social womb in which children are spir- 
itually matured to be born a second time 
and into the social group as members of 
society." 

Auto-Erethism 

My own observation leads me to the con- 
clusion that the habit of masturbation is 



104 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

rarely formed by boys whose parents have 
maintained intimate relations with them — 
giving them adequate information, and 
answering all questions when they are 
asked. This information should in all 
cases be given before the boy is eight years 
of age. The habit is usually acquired 
innocently. It is hard for some to break 
the habit after it is once firmly estab- 
lished. 

The differences between the effects of 
solitary vice and those of sexual connec- 
tion are due to the following facts: The 
means are always at hand for this form of 
sex gratification, so that it may be indulged 
in with a frequency not usually possible 
with sexual intercourse. For the same 
reason it is likely to be learned and prac- 
tised before maturity is established, thus 
producing a premature and one-sided de- 
velopment of sex activity. 

Masturbation is to be condemned upon 
grounds more serious than the dangers of 
physical exhaustion through excess. 

1. In proportion as masturbation is 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 105 

learned early and becomes a confirmed 
habit, it decreases one's ability to live a 
normal sex life, for it takes the sex desire 
while it is growing and gives it a wrong 
direction. Sex desire should lead one into 
the personal intimacies of a personal affec- 
tion; the more deeply the solitary habit is 
developed, the less ability and inclination 
there is for the normal intimacies of mar- 
ried life, as well as for normal social life 
with men and women. 

The confirmed masturbator often, if not 
usually, has an abnormally developed sex 
consciousness on the physical plane, which 
embarrasses him in the presence of normal 
people. He is therefore likely to be timid 
and embarrassed. This is peculiarly the 
case when he imagines that his habits show 
themselves in altered appearance or be- 
havior, so that people suspect the cause. 
These causes have produced some of the 
cases of deepest misery and hopelessness 
I have ever known in men otherwise able, 
happy, and wholesome. These causes are 
peculiarly effective in men of fine nervous 



106 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

organization, keen sensitiveness, and high 
ideals. 

2. Sex desire is by masturbation satis- 
fied in its lowest and least adequat-^ level 
— the physical. Love, for the normal- 
minded, is one of the great main-springs of 
life, leading to aspiration, faith, love, ap- 
preciation of beauty, and the service of 
others. This habit lessens the possibil- 
ities of the great experiences of personal 
enjoyment of love and beauty. Happi- 
ness and satisfaction are to be found most 
fully and intensely when the physical is 
but an intimate avenue through which to 
express the love that one has for another. 
To use it as an end in itself is to injure or 
to ruin its higher, fuller, richer develop- 
ment on a spiritual level. 

3. To do what one knows to be wrong is 
most deeply injurious to the character. 
It tends to lessen one's self-respect and to 
make one less apt to resist temptation from 
other sources. The confirmed mastur- 
bator, for this reason, is most likely to be 
ashamed, timid, and weak in moral fiber. 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 107 

This habit tends enormously towards self- 
ishness, because it makes sex pleasure a 
self-gratification rather than the rapture 
of loving another person. 

Masturbation is therefore condemned 
because it ties up sex feeling with selfish 
enjoyment; because it sets up nerve asso- 
ciations that are purely physical; and be- 
cause one knows that it is in violation of 
the social conscience. Self-respect is al- 
most always lessened by doing in secret 
what one knows would be condemned by 
the best judgment of the finest people. 

The careful work of Exner has shown 
that while the habit is most likely to be 
actually established just before or during 
puberty, the real beginnings are usually 
much earlier and lie in perfectly normal 
mental, emotional, and physical activities. 
The boy is endlessly curious and has almost 
boundless inclination and capacity for ex- 
periment. This curiosity and experiment 
psychosis is not only natural, but is one of 
the necessary forces that lead the boy to 
find out what kind of a world he is living in. 



108 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

Leaving out pathological cases, it is 
doubtful whether little children have any 
more curiosity of feeling about sex organs 
or phenomena than they have about any 
other parts of the body or of experience. 
But when every move to find out about 
these things is met by silence — or what 
the child soon learns is evasion or poetic 
lies — there gradually grows within him a 
state of increasing interest. He finds that 
other children are in the same condition 
and this very secretness adds zest to their 
search for facts; every garbled fact is 
talked over, and many experiments are 
tried, just as they are tried in other direc- 
tions, but here under the great stimulus of 
secrecy. It is tabooed and hence greatly 
enhanced in interest. It hardly seems pos- 
sible for there to be more unpromising con- 
ditions for the development of a normal 
sex and love consciousness. 

Parents and other adults are not merely 
noncommunicative about these sex matters 
— they are worse, for they act embarrassed, 
and this is usually interpreted as showing 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 109 

a feeling of guilt. There is thus estab- 
lished in the minds and feelings of most 
boys and of many girls this most evil at- 
mosphere, coupled with inadequate and 
usually perverted views as to facts. All 
of this is accomplished before the special 
interest in sex matters is aroused by ap- 
proaching sex maturity. 

These conditions account for the many 
who establish the habit before puberty and 
for the fact that an actual majority who 
acquire the habit do so during, or before, 
the early adolescent years, that is, before 
fifteen. I have not found this habit to be 
common among those whose fathers or 
mothers talked to them frankly about 
these things while they were children. The 
true reason should be told to boys, namely, 
that to develop and use sex in this way is 
like starting on the wrong road, that a boy 
who develops it on this level is handi- 
capped in its use in big ways. It is bad 
to tell a boy that it will make him crazy, 
because that is not true, and the boy will 
soon find it out. It is true that some alienists 



no THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

believe that excessive masturbation some- 
times produces ultimately dementia prse- 
cox. But this is as yet unproveuo Many 
of us incline to the belief that when the 
habit is carried on in this excessive way, 
it is because the excessive practice is a 
symptom of the disease rather than a cause 
of it. In any case, the truth is stronger 
than any fear of dementia prsecox, 

A considerable fraction of all men fail 
to develop the true power of sex in its 
highest and strongest levels because of 
early sex habits and of the atmosphere that 
has been made for them by suggestive 
stories. For many boys it is enough to 
put them on their guard by saying that 
such conduct is low — common — that it 
prevents a man from being what he other- 
wise would be. This should be said in 
many ways and at many times before a 
boy is eight. The right atmosphere should 
thus be created. 

Any sex habit is difficult to eradicate 
when it has been established. The time 
to begin with a boy is before it has started. 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 111 

It is not hard to refrain then. The diffi- 
culty comes to those who have not been 
guarded at the right time. If the right 
ideals are gradually developed during 
childhood, and the boys know the facts in 
the case, they will in all probability go 
right. 

As a man "thinketh in his heart, so is 
he." The man who gratifies his sex de- 
sires upon a low level is storing his mind 
with images. He will find that when he 
loves deeply and marries, the memory of 
his *'low level" experiences and dreamings 
will intrude themselves into his mind, even 
when he is having his most holy experi- 
ences. He finds that the most precious 
things have been polluted. He cannot by 
mere effort forget what he has done and 
felt. 

This is the most disastrous result of 
going with prostitutes. It fills the im- 
agination with pictures that have been 
painted by lust, rather than by love. The 
innermost sacred chambers of his love have 
been furnished by the prostitute. His love 



112 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOO 

may bring to it experiences of deep beauty 
and holiness, but the old furnishings re- 
main. The newer but slovdy displace the 
older. He sees that love itself has been 
desecrated by the use of its ceremony and 
ritual in the service of the sensual and 
selfish. This is a sorry love-equipment to 
offer to a clean-minded woman. The con- 
dition of the house of the mind into which 
she is asked to come, live, and love is of 
far greater importance to her future happi- 
ness than is the condition of the material 
building in which she must dw^ell. 

When a man loves a woman, he longs to 
have his consciously sexual self responsive 
primarily to her love and beauty. What 
shall a man do w^ho wants to purify his 
imagination.^ He must ally himself with 
clean friends — both men and w^omen. He 
is not to expect any sudden change. I 
know of nothing that will help so much as 
a clean-minded woman who loves and 
understands. Mental and moral cathar- 
sis in the old Greek sense is brought about 
by confession to the woman. She will for- 




HUNGER FOR WOMAN 113 

give and help. The new life will gradually 
displace the old. 

Let me close the discussion of this com- 
plex subject by a most practical suggestion, 
which is, marry early. 

Marriage should come about in the early 
twenties. In general, communities are im- 
moral in direct proportion to the number 
of unmarried adults in them. 

Marriage has been getting later and 
later, for the standards of living are rising, 
and many, if not most, young men are in 
the thirties before they have an assured 
income upon which they can rely, which is 
adequate to support a wife on the same 
plane to which she has been accustomed. 

There has later been developing a coun- 
ter movement which I believe to be whole- 
some. In the old days the wives did their 
full share in support of the home. They 
raised children, handled the milk, made the 
clothing, cared for the garden, spun the 
wool, etc., etc. Most of these productive 
occupations have left the home and are 
now being carried on by specialists in the 



114 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

community. There is but little produc- 
tive work to be done in the home — there 
is but little work that demands the skill, 
taste, and abilities that were demanded of 
our grandmothers. These are the two 
factors involved. Woman needs work ade- 
quate to her best power just as man does. 
For many, if not for most women, such 
work is now to be found in the community 
rather than in the home. Hence women 
are taking to productive community work. 
This permits of early marriage. A woman 
who has stood on her own feet financially 
before marriage is a stronger woman than 
one who has not. 

More and more people are marrying 
under conditions where both remain in 
paid positions. This is better than not 
marrying. 

Again in the old days it was the custom 
for the parents to help the young couple 
to get started by turning over to them a 
bit of land, some tools, furnishings, etc. 
The corresponding thing today is for par- 
ents to give definite reasonable financial 



HUNGER FOR WOMAN 115 

assistance to permit of early marriage. 
The generations overlap now as never be- 
fore. Preparation is longer. 

This question of early marriage is of 
permanent importance to the state and to 
the family. The further development of 
wholesome relation between the sexes is 
almost hopeless, unless we older people 
step in to help make early marriage pos- 
sible. It is to be done not as a matter of 
favor to the children but as a right, just 
as food, shelter, and clothing when they 
are young. It is a necessary part of giv- 
ing them a fair start in life. 

Let me give two illustrations. The son 
of a university professor is now in his third 
year in a medical school. He has just mar- 
ried. His wife is earning one hundred 
dollars a month teaching in a private 
school. The parents of the son are giving 
the same allowance they did before he was 
married. How much better this is — ^for 
the couple, for the parents, and for the com- 
munity! 

The only son of wealthy parents is 



116 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

twenty-two. He has graduated from col- 
lege and is more than a mere boy. With 
the cordial cooperation of both parents 
he has married and will now go to work or 
to further study as circumstances may in- 
dicate. The couple are happy and whole- 
somely related. The parents are happy. 
The community is better off. 

This is the normal, wholesome, and best 
way. "^ 



IV 
HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 



IV 
HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 

Parental Love 

When our first baby came, I was enor- 
mously interested in the way my wife acted 
and felt. The adoring way she looked at 
it as it lay in her arms, the ecstasy with 
which she listened to the plaintive la-a 
were fascinating. I could see, as she sat 
in her low rocking chair with the baby in 
her arms, singing to it, that she was swept 
with waves of the deepest emotion — not 
mere happiness, for it was something big- 
ger, almost like pain in its intensity. It 
took hold of her body as well as of her 
heart. 

I wanted to be a good father. I wanted 
to be the best of fathers and believed that 
in order to accomplish this I ought to love 
the baby, feel to the baby in the same way 
that she did. Accordingly I tried to put 
1X9 



120 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

myself in the same conditions. I learned 
the same little song, "Baby is a Sailor 
Boy," I noticed exactly the mechanism 
of holding and cuddling. I took the same 
room, the same chair, the same time of 
day — and tried it myself. I did it all well 
— even she said so. The baby seemed to 
be pleased, but much to my surprise and 
chagrin things did not happen in me such 
as happened in her under similar condi- 
tions. I thought something must be the 
matter with me, that I was not normally 
equipped as a father, for I did not have 
waves of emotion chasing up and down 
my back, my eyes did not get moist. I 
was mainly afraid that I would get wet. 

This and other parallel experiences were 
turned over in my mind for years. I only 
gradually came to see that father- and 
mother-love are not interchangeable terms 
— that fatherhood diflPers profoundly from 
motherhood, and that to a well ordered 
childhood they are both necessary. For 
a long time I believed that it was the man's 
business to provide for the child, but that 



HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 121 

actual contact with it was the mother's 
business almost exclusively. 

It was not till many years later, when 
one of our babies left us, that either my 
wife or I knew how I loved the children. 
Mother-love is articulate. Father-love is 
relatively dumb. Mother-love speaks in 
poetry and in the drama. It is discussed 
by scientific students of life and of society, 
and is recorded in biographies. Father- 
love I believe to be not less real, but more 
below the surface. Mother-love must 
speak — the child obviously needs it. 

Mother-love seems to be on the average 
stronger than is father-love. This is in- 
dicated by the fact that it is far more com- 
mon for men than for women to desert 
their children. Men will get discouraged 
and give up and go away, leaving the wife 
and children to their fate. Women rarely 
do this. They usually stick to their chil- 
dren, even at the risk of certain loss of 
their own lives. 

We ordinarily think of the mother feel- 
ings as dawning much earlier in the girl 



122 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

than do father feelings in the boy. The 
little girl plays doll, the little boy rarely 
does so. We started our married life with 
the belief that the main reason why boys 
diflfered psychically from girls — particu- 
larly before the teens — was because we 
treat them so differently. We put the 
girl into skirts and say *Mon't'' to her, 
while we give all kinds of opportunities to 
the boy. We thought that child nature 
was plastic and could be molded largely 
as it was deemed wise. We wished our 
children to be sure to have the best health, 
accordingly we intended that they should 
lead as active an out-door life as was pos- 
sible. We observed that little girls played 
with dolls a great deal and that this was 
usually an indoor sedentary occupation. We 
knew the power of social contagion, so when 
our first little girl came we said to ourselves, 
''No dolls," and further, *' No girl friends, 
for they play with dolls, and dolls are infec- 
tious." So for several years we kept our 
girls without dolls and without girl friends. 
They were dressed in bloomers, went camp- 



HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 123 

ing with us during the summers, were given 
every opportunity and incentive for a 
sturdy out-of-door life. I did not know 
that they even knew what a doll was. 

One Christmas I said to our oldest, 
*' Louise, what would you like best of all 
for a Christmas present.^" The answer 
came so promptly that it almost seemed 
that it must have waited, already prepared 
in her mind, ready for action at a moment's 
notice — still she was only seven, so this 
could hardly have been true. She said, 
"Papa, if I could have a doll!" And so 
she did. Some years later I took a census 
of our doll family. We then had four doll- 
playing girls. Our doll family consisted 
of thirty-seven. This number did not in- 
clude any temporary or unrelated mem- 
bers. The thirty-seven were grouped in 
families — each one had her own name, his- 
tory, personality, characteristics for affec- 
tion, and most of them had real removable 
clothing. I did not count the hundreds 
of spool dolls, acorn dolls, peanut dolls, 
nor the evanescent hundreds of fairy paper 



124 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

dolls. A study of what the girls did with 
these dolls has satisfied me that they af- 
ford one of the greatest bases for education 
of hand, head, and heart that we possess. 
I think that this devotion to the doll is a 
clear and early manifestation of the power- 
ful mother instinct. 

In searching for the beginnings of father 
instinct, I have come to see that a boy's 
relation to his dog brings out in him much 
of the feelings of the father- — pride, exten- 
sion of personality, tenderness, feelings of 
care, joy of response. A boy and a dog 
make almost as fruitful a subject as do a 
girl and a doll. There is nothing that will 
make a boy fight quicker than will abusing 
or hurting his dog. 

Part of the difference between father- 
and mother-love is due to the long months 
during which the mother is consciously 
carrying the child in her body — the phys- 
ical sufferings of childbirth, the fact of 
nursing. There are men who are so sym- 
pathetic as really to suffer with their wives 
' — ^but hardly enough to render probable 



HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 125 

the truth of the story of the telegram read- 
ing, ''Boy born last night. Father and 
child doing well/' 

Further than this I cannot go in dis- 
tinguishing the differences in the develop- 
ing of the parent instinct in boy and girl. 

As I read the current of custom, young 
men are consciously thinking of two things 
^when they get ready to propose, more than 
they used to when I was a boy. They are 
these. First: What kind of friends and 
comrades shall we be after the newness of 
our relation has worn off and we settle 
down to the steady pull in the harness of 
life together? How shall we look to each 
other after we have seen each other across 
the dining table for three thousand six 
hundred and fifty times? Second: What 
kind of a chance will our children have in 
health, vigor, temperament, and ability? 

Let me give one case. It is typical of 
many that I have known. 

They had a beautiful time together, in 
the woods, at the piano, in sports, and in 
poetry. They were surprised to find that 



126 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

love had come in silently and without be- 
ing bidden or thought of. They were both 
high-strung and nervous — there had been 
numerous break-downs on both sides of 
their families. So they went their own 
ways, for the probability of having handi- 
capped children was not to be thought of, 
and neither was childlessness. That is, 
they loved their potential children enough 
to deny themselves the greatest of happi- 
ness, marriage. More and more people 
are thinking in just this way. That man 
showed the hunger of fatherhood as deep 
as the love of mothers for their children — 
but in a different way. 

There is, however, an equal danger on 
the other side. It sometimes seems as if 
the chief effect of the modern eugenic move- 
ment was to prevent the most conscien- 
tious and best people from marrying at all. 
When one puts one's mind on the dangers 
and diflSculties, on latent tendencies and 
weaknesses, examining the records of one's 
ancestry, the future inevitably looks dubi- 
ous. There is much of evil in ourselves 



HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 127 

and in our ancestry — in even the best of 
us. The more conscientious ones say, "No, 
I will not marry." That is, these argu- 
ments and tests tend to prevent the con- 
scientious from marrying, but have no in- 
fluence on the average person. Dangers 
are to be thought of, but the main thing to 
be held constantly in consciousness is the 
beauty of giving life, of serving, of helping 
the "step up." It is of more importance 
to focus our minds on the strong and good 
qualities that exist in the strain to which 
we belong than on the weak ones, for it is 
the positive forces that count. We suc- 
ceed by what we have, whatever that is. 
The strong qualities tend to push aside 
the weak ones and often to carry their load. 
There are two kinds of heredity, hered- 
ity of capacities, and heredity of achieve- 
ment. Capacity is biologically carried — 
the results of struggle and attainment are 
passed from generation to generation 
through social channels. We all recognize 
the obligation to give to the succeeding 
generations the precious heritage that has 



128 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

come down to us as science, art, literature, 
history, etc. Is there any lesser obliga- 
tion through satisfying the longings for 
parenthood to pass on the capacities which 
belong to the chain in which one is but a 
link? Life is a chain. We do not live to 
ourselves. Let us pass the torch of life 
on undimmed to those who but for us will 
not live. 

Mother-love is generally understood to 
be the most perfect, adequate, and pure of 
any love. The reason is that the mother 
gives everything and receives nothing. 
There is nothing that the child can do that 
will reward the mother for the suffering 
and service so constant as to be almost 
slavery. The illuminating part of it is 
that the mother wishes no reward, for she 
has the greatest, most satisfying happiness 
there is on earth. There is no other so 
perfect illustration of the richness of giving 
utterly and completely without any hope or 
expectation of personal advantage thereby. 
People who are so blinded by the economic 
struggle as to think that the world is com- 



HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 129 

posed of people who will sacrificeevery thing 
for money, and that it is every one for him- 
self, should remember that the deepest 
happiness of one half of humankind is to 
give themselves in pain and service that 
others may live. And it is not even called 
sacrifice — nor is it. It is supreme self- 
realization. I do not mean that mother- 
love is consciously unselfish or kind, for it 
is not. It may leave a woman just as hard, 
selfish, and pitiless as competition in busi- 
ness sometimes leaves a man. 

What Constitutes a Good Father? 

The father marries so that the child will 
be well born. Of this I have already spo- 
ken. He will see that food, shelter, and 
clothing are suppUed and that the author- 
ity of the mother is upheld. The child 
who asked, "" Mamma — who is that man 
that comes here on Sundays and spanks 
me.^" was not entirely misrepresenting the 
case. The highest privilege of the father 
is to live along with the mother and child. 
The father is just as important in the de- 



130 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

velopment of character, ideals, and habits 
of action as the mother. Neither one can 
make up for the loss of the other. The 
man who so devotes himself to his business 
or profession that he has no time to live 
with his children, under the notion that 
by securing a large income or reputation 
he is benefiting his family, is laboring 
under one of the commonest of delusions. 
It demands time, attention, and freshness 
of body and mind to live with a boy or a 
girl. To give support and not to give 
yourself is to rob them of the most pre- 
cious part of their rightful inheritance. 
The happiest men I know keep their own 
lives rich and full by doing things with 
their children — going tramping and camp- 
ing, making boats and kites, building fires, 
finding and observing birds and animals. 
No money that a man can possibly earn 
will compensate a child for the loss of such 
companionship. A man may employ a 
nurse and a tutor who know far more than 
he does, but they are robbing the boy and 
the girl of their most precious right, that 



HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 131 

of the personal contact and love of their 
father and mother. 

The kind of preparation that a man 
should make for fatherhood is just the same 
as for any wholesome life; but a man is not 
likely so to prepare if he does it merely for 
himself — let him keep himself alive by con- 
tact with daily environment, tools, dogs, 
boats, birds, mountains — all the direct in- 
terests of normal people. I think that going 
camping every year is a great thing for the 
soul as well as for the body. It brings us 
back to the experiences — ^the sights, smells, 
sounds, touches — under which man devel- 
oped. It makes for wholesomeness and 
sanity, for poise, quiet nerves, and clear 
thinking. The deepest things cannot be 
bought either for one's children or for one- 
self. They can only be personally given 
each to the other. It is stupid as well as 
selfish to deny oneself the joys of father- 
hood that one may have more money — 
more things. 

Not long ago I met on the road a pair 
of little steers about a year and a half old. 



132 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

They were being driven by a boy of about 
twelve. The father walked alongside, giv- 
ing help and advice as it was needed. In 
this simple episode I saw much that is 
beautiful in life summed up — the boy and 
father doing something together; the de- 
light of the father in the boy; the boy 
learning from the father the ways of get- 
ting on. I saw further that here was re- 
vealed the contagion of character, the 
heredity of father to son working in social 
lines; but the natural and inevitable asso- 
ciation of fathers and sons has largely gone 
through modern specialization, and now 
such richness, joy, and opportunities are to 
be secured only by those who realize what 
is involved and deliberately arrange their 
lives with this in mind. 

One part of the strength of fatherhood 
is that produced by the need that some 
other person has for us. The very help- 
lessness of the child appeals and is a source 
of strength. That we are needed is a large 
factor in happiness. We need to have 
people dependent upon us, just as we our- 



HUNGER FOR CHILDREN 133 

selves need that upon which we can our- 
selves depend. 

Parenthood is assuming new phases, due 
to the fact that activities and life which 
used to be carried on in the home are now 
being carried on in and by the community 
— school, playground, movies, streets, Sun- 
day school, parks, and museums. Each is 
a specialization of activities and interests 
formerly belonging to the parents and the 
home. The teaching of little children is a 
function of motherhood. Many women 
are now specializing upon this psychic side 
of mothering. 

For these reasons the father finds that 
in order that the environment may be 
suitable for his own children he must se- 
cure favorable conditions for all children, 
and indeed for the entire community. We 
are "members one of another" in an ever 
enlarging sense. The day when a father 
could exercise his powers exclusively in the 
home has passed. There are larger fields 
for his power as a father than there used to 
be. The community is now the field in 



134 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

which he does the work or conducts the 
business that in generations gone by he 
discharged on his own land or in his own 
home. The modern world has vastly ex- 
tended his field and scope as a worker. 
The community is to be dominated by the 
same spirit and motives that dominate the 
good home. Here is a real job — more im- 
portant and diflScult than is the conduct of 
any mere business. 

The man who becomes a Scout-Master 
is performing the psychic functions of 
fatherhood. So the woman, as a Guardian 
of Camp Fire Girls, is a *' spiritual mother." 



V 

HUNGER FOR GOD 



HUNGER FOR GOD 

By the term Hunger for God I mean the 
longing to get into touch with the reality 
which is behind and explains personality, 
to be able to tie up one's life with the great 
plan, to get into personal touch with the 
Supreme personality. It shows itself also 
in love of the beautiful, the orderly, the 
progressive. 

I shall not deal as much with the devel- 
opment of this love, ^s I have with the 
other affections, because so many people 
are in doubt as to whether there is a God 
who can be personally known or not. Al- 
most all the people whom I hear speak 
about God quote some one else; few people 
seem to speak from personal experience. 
And yet without this personal experience 
there is no real knowledge possible, and 
to those who have this experience no proof 
137 



138 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

is necessary, to them life and the world are 
different from what they were before* Think 
what it would mean to become personally 
acquainted with the one who is running 
the world and to be able consciously to 
get into the game with Him and to be 
friends, talk back and forth. What I want 
to do is to induce you to make the try and 
find out for yourselves. I am putting the 
steps into definite form — ten weeks, a text, 
a class, notes, a technique — so as to make 
it clear and put it into terms of other uni- 
versity attainments. 

What I am giving to you I have proven 
by personal experience. It is what I wish 
that I had known in my own student days. 

Nikko, one of the most beautiful and 
romantic spots in Japan, is a favorite place 
of worship. Its shrines are numerous, and 
about them cluster the traditions of men 
who have made the search for God their 
chief endeavor. Above Nikko are the 
Falls of Kegon — six hundred feet in height. 
Some years ago a post-graduate student of 
the Imperial University of Japan threw 



HUNGER FOR GOD 139 

himself into the river and went over the 
Falls. He left a letter saying that he was 
going to the next world to search for God 
— that he had studied the philosophies and 
religions, but had failed to find Him, and 
was satisfied that God could not be dis- 
covered by study, and that hence he was 
going into the next world to continue his 
search. During the eight years following, 
two hundred and fifty-eight other students 
pursued the same course for the same pur- 
pose, in spite of increasingly stringent pre- 
ventive efforts on the part of the author- 
ities. 

The loftiest people of all the world have 
made the search for God their chief en- 
deavor. Theirs was the age-long and 
world-wide longing to know reality — to 
enter into conscious relation with that 
which is back of and includes personality, 
time, space, and power. It is a longing 
that comes forward usually in the latter 
teens. 

The satisfaction of this hunger makes 
life coherent and unified, develops the 



140 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

highest types of personality, manifests it- 
self in deepening the ties of friendship, 
marriage, and parenthood, and affords the 
only possible basis of a social world. The 
world jars, fights, and is destroyed, just in 
proportion as the individuals and nations 
are self -centered* It develops just in pro- 
portion as the individuals and nations are 
mutually or God-centered, for this is friend- 
ship and service. How, then, may this 
hunger lead to life rather than to the re- 
nunciation of life, as symbolized by the 
tragedy of Kegon.^ 

God is to be found by a discipline as 
rigorous, and by steps as definite as those 
by which one learns science or philosophy, 
and — what is even more to the point — 
by processes which are equally in accord 
with known law. 

It simplifies our thinking to remember 
that the love of God is an affection and 
hence grows according to the general laws 
of the affections, which we have been con- 
sidering. To have a friend it is necessary 
to become acquainted, to know him. This 



HUNGER FOR GOD 141 

is accomplished through intelligence and 
feeling. It is also necessary to do what is 
pleasing to one's friend and to avoid giving 
offense. Let me take up these elements 
in sequence. In order to be as practical 
as possible I shall discuss a practical mode 
of procedure, rather than theoretical con- 
siderations. 

1. We all know the process of getting ac- 
quainted with a friend. It takes time, it 
takes attention. There is much to be 
learned before one can pray well. Prayer 
has its technique or forms, its limitations 
and possibilities, just as do other forms of 
communication. "The Meaning of Pray- 
er," by Fosdick,^ is the best guide I know 
for this field. Fosdick gives a ten weeks' 
course — a lesson for each day. His psy- 
chology is sound, pedagogy excellent, and 
the people who follow his instructions uni- 
formly tell me that they get results. 

The effectiveness of this prayer-study 
period is dependent to a considerable extent 
upon how free the mind is to give con- 

^ Association Press, New York, 60 cents. 



142 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

centrated attention to the matter in hand. 
For this reason, this study should be under- 
taken when the mind is most free. For 
most of us the first moments of the day are 
best, before the morning paper by its head- 
Hnes has drawn our attention in a dozen 
different directions, before estabhshing the 
multiple contacts of meeting people, and 
before undertaking the duties of the day. 
That is, read and digest one of Fosdick's 
lessons each day when you first awaken, 
when your mind is fresh and unperturbed. 
Give to it the power of concentrated atten- 
tion. Most of what we know about God 
as Father and Friend comes to us through 
the life and character of Christ, that is, 
God has shown Himself most clearly in 
the person of Christ. He has influenced 
the course of history more than any other 
person, and is the greatest personality of 
history. God shows Himself through per- 
sonality — and knowing Him enlarges and 
deepens personality in every way. I do 
not take up the consideration of these steps 
in the process of forming the friendship 



HUNGER FOR GOD 143 

with God, for they are treated wisely by 
Fosdick. 

2. Exercise your friendship capacity by 
selecting some person to whom you wish 
to be closer — your mother, for example. 
Think through your relations with her. 
How long since you last wrote to her.^ 
Did you tell her the things about yourself 
and your friends that she most longs to 
know? Did you think about her affairs 
and interests, and ask her how definite 
matters were getting on, thus indicating 
that you were thinking about her? Do 
you know when her birthday is? Have 
you thought how to make her happy at 
that time? Did you ever think of send- 
ing some special thing — ^book — flowers — 
candy to her on the day when, with pain 
and with deep love, she brought you into 
the world? In general, what can you do 
to deepen and to increase the vividness 
and the reality of your relation to your 
mother? Think about your mother each 
morning, till you see that you have thought 
through and established your line of con- 



144 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

duct in this direction. When this has 
been accompKshed take some other per- 
son — a class-mate, a friend, someone you 
do not get on well with — or perhaps some 
cause^ You will find that a few moments 
of this kind at the beginning of each day 
will help to create an atmosphere of friend- 
liness and warmth about you, an assur- 
ance of happiness ready to make its way 
into consciousness at any moment, 

The point is this, that we grow in those 
directions in which we think and act. God 
is to he known in direct proportion as the 
power to love and to understand love grows, 
hence deliberately plan and think these 
things through. 

3. Pencil in hand, plan out your day. 
In knowing God, in forming a friendship 
with God, it is as essential to avoid things 
that are contrary to His purposes as it is 
in any other friendship. When a man de- 
sires to win the friendship and love of a 
woman who hates the smell of tobacco, 
he will not come to her with his clothes 
saturated with that odor. He will try to 



HUNGER FOR GOD 145 

be and to appear to be the kind of a man 
she admires — that is, he tries to please and 
he tries to avoid displeasing. He gives 
earnest attention to each of these steps. 
These efforts are equally important in 
establishing friendship with God. Hence, 
each day must be planned out in accord- 
ance with what we know about His pur- 
poses — to aid them, and equally to avoid 
going contrary to His desires. This means 
deliberately to shape up each day in ac- 
cordance with His will. 

Plan your day, therefore, in accordance 
with the best that you know in all respects. 
You have your obligations and your privi- 
leges. Think through your obligations: 
First, are you ready for your class work; 
if not, and in view of the time available, 
what is the best course to pursue, what 
time should you give.^ There is to be a 
committee meeting; are you ready for that.^ 
Consider each item of the day. If you 
have to telephone about important matters, 
jot it down. Are you to meet people with 
whom you are apt to disagree and where 



146 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

there may be some difference of opinion, 
some controversy which is unpleasant or 
unwise? If so, can you handle yourself 
most wisely to get the best results from that 
meeting? It is your determination to be 
friendly. Set up your reaction before- 
hand, just as definitely as one sets up a 
reaction in a physiological laboratory, when 
one wishes to shorten reaction time. In 
making a difficult dive from a spring board, 
the diver always pauses a few seconds, 
generally with crouched body and with 
fixed gaze, looking at the spot toward which 
he is to jump. He is concentrating his 
attention and coordinating his muscles 
ready for the jump he is to make. When he 
is completely prepared, having felt through 
the entire act, he makes his run and jump. 
Acts involving great skill always require 
this setting up of conduct. This is just as 
true in the great things of life, as it is in 
its contemporary muscular acts. 

Think through the quantity of work 
that is ahead of you. Have you more to 
do than you can do? If so, what are the 



HUNGER FOR GOD 147 

best things to eliminate and how can they 
be eliminated? Perhaps you can omit a 
committee meeting by telephoning or drop- 
ping a note to the chairman, giving your 
views on the point at issue. In any case, 
it is far better to look over fully the amount 
of work to be done during the day, and to 
eliminate what should be eliminated in 
plenty of time, than to wait until the exig- 
encies of the moment prevent you from 
keeping some important engagement, ne- 
cessitating your telephoning at the last 
moment. Make your day orderly. You 
may have to work rapidly, but you need 
not work hurriedly. Hurry is waste. 
You are preparing your mind and conduct 
for a great experience; such experience 
cannot come to a disordered, hurried mind. 
You are putting yourself in the position to 
command life, rather than to be compelled 
by the circumstances of the moment. By 
looking ahead you guide, by blindly work- 
ing from moment to moment you are the 
slave of each moment. Let the program 
for the day be a reasonable one. As a 



148 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

college boy, many times I set up for my- 
self programs which could be carried out 
only under ideal conditions, and conditions 
are never ideal. Things will happen that 
will upset a too closely planned program. 
Allow some play, some give and take. Do 
not fit things in so tight that a few mo- 
ments of conversation will upset your 
scheme. Do not expect of yourself any 
new and extraordinary powers. Plan out 
your day so as to get the most and the 
best out of it, in view of the nature of 
your own limitations and of the environ- 
ment in which you work This is working 
in accordance with the Will of God. 

Power is greater if several work together 
on the plan. Friendship with God is not 
merely a personal affair, it is a social affair. 
Team-work in the religious life is just as 
important as team-work in science or in 
athletics, for we are not merely individuals 
— we are parts of a whole. The experi- 
ence of each one is valuable, and this fact 
is no more important in one field than in 
another. Get together from four to ten 



HUNGER FOR GOD 149 

people, who will unite in forming a team 
and undertake the ten week program, 
which I have indicated. It is better to 
undertake a program for a definite rather 
than an indefinite length of time; to look 
for results in a stated period rather than 
in a vague, indefinite way. 

Meet together once a week for com- 
parison of notes, for discussion of matters 
of common interest, and possibly for some 
objective piece of service or friendship or 
some function that you wish to carry out 
together. If possible have an experienced 
leader, who can do as much for this seminar 
as for a seminar in philosophy or science. 
Keep for further reference written notes of 
results, failures, and successes, as you 
would in any other research. During the 
day, when you are doing other things, sub- 
jects that you want to consider more fully 
will come to your mind in connection with 
this study. Jot them down for use the 
following or subsequent mornings. 

What results is it right to expect from 
such a ten weeks' course.'^ The results 



150 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

that I am to state are all in accordance with 
well-known psychological and physiolog- 
ical law. 

First: One may expect to have a sub- 
stantial increase in vitality, more endur- 
ance for work, better ability when one is 
working, easier concentration of the atten- 
tion, and greater ease in doing hard work. 
Our knowledge of how this is accomplished 
is based largely on the work of Professor 
Cannon in his book, "Bodily Changes in 
Pain, Hunger, Fear, and Rage." He 
shows that worry, fear, and anger are dom- 
inant factors, altering circulation of the 
blood and stopping the peristaltic action 
of the digestive organs: hence they inter- 
fere with digestion and delay the elimina- 
tion of waste, thus causing a vicious circle. 
For poor digestion and faulty elimination 
of waste, we physicians think, are responsi- 
ble for more headaches, more duU-minded- 
ness, and discouragement than is any other 
one cause. We think that people whose 
digestive operations are interfered with in 
these ways have less vitality with which to 



HUNGER FOR GOD 151 

resist the infections which are so common 
to all of us, particularly colds, grippe, and 
tuberculosis. That is why in most hos- 
pitals all general cases, as a matter of 
routine, are given cathartics at once. The 
steps which I have proposed eliminate 
worry and fear of the unexpected; unpre- 
paredness is eliminated, sleep is better, di- 
gestion is better, vitality is better, all those 
things which depend on vitality are in- 
creased; recovery from colds is quicker, 
and recovery from fatigue is more rapid. 
This phase of the subject may be noted by 
some — that there is a marked increase of 
power and smoothness of action. Again, 
scholarship is increased, particularly 
through increased power to work, partly 
through increased clearness of mind due 
to greater quietness, to less fatigue stuffs 
in the blood, and to greater ability to 
concentrate. One's judgment is obviously 
improved where one is better balanced, 
where one takes time to think things 
over every morning and has taken a defi- 
nite point of view to decide questions. It 



152 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

is obvious that happiness will be definitely 
increased, success in one's work will be 
greater, friendship and the affections are 
quickened. The experiences that most 
people have under these conditions is 
wholly unexpected. Thoughts are shot 
into the mind from the unconscious self 
in some way. One may be working or 
even reading, and suddenly the answer to 
some question or problem will come into 
one's mind, or a definite line of thought 
will come which leads to the answer. Sub- 
jects which had been thought about in the 
morning without any result may during 
the day or during some other day follow- 
ing receive a surprisingly simple and ade- 
quate answer, just as if the unconscious 
self had been mulling the thing over and 
had reached the conclusion, and then this 
conclusion passing the threshold of con- 
sciousness had announced itself. The un- 
conscious self or whatever one chooses to 
call this power does not work well under 
conditions of hurry, worry, or disorder, 
of constipation, of poor sleep, or of de- 



HUNGER FOR GOD 153 

pressed vitality. It is a phenomenon of 
vitality. 

One has a right to expect further that 
the mind itself will become cleaner, not 
merely in its present action and in its 
thoughts of life, but in its imaginings, and 
that even its memories will be made 
cleaner. I have already spoken about how 
the chamber of the affections is often pol- 
luted by wrong acting and wrong imagin- 
ings on a basis of mere physical enjoy- 
ment, and how when love comes in its big 
measure these old memories and imagin- 
ings intrude themselves, and thus smirch 
that which one wishes to keep pure and 
sweet above everything in life. The course 
which I have suggested will clean up these 
old memories and imaginings, for increased 
affection floating through the mind and 
steady alliance of one's will and purposes 
with God will do exactly this thing. This 
is part of what I understand to be the for- 
giveness of sin. It is not merely the restor- 
ing of one's friendship with God, but it is 
the actual wiping out of a large part of the 



154 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

results of sin, wiping them out from the 
innermost parts of one's life. 

As the days go by, there comes to most 
people a progressive consciousness of a per- 
sonal character. The morning period is 
looked forward to with delight. When 
going to sleep or waking the thought of 
God comes into one's mind with a vivid 
and personal feeling, and one becomes 
aware of a mutual and personal affection 
which has been established. I do not 
mean that this consciousness of the pres- 
ence of God will at first be definite, nor 
that it will be constant. It will not come 
suddenly but will come without warning, 
and in ways that one cannot predict or 
foresee — then again it may be absent for 
long periods. The memory of my own 
mother is that of one who during her later 
years seemed to live almost constantly in 
the presence of God — not that this les- 
sened her personality, it magnified it in all 
her relations. This is the experience which 
we find in the most beautiful hymns that 
we have and which corresponds in there- 



HUNGER FOR GOD 155 

ligious world to the love songs of the poets. 
Thousands who are predominantly motor- 
minded will come into closer conscious- 
ness of God in the world of action. But 
all find Him in some way, find the world 
shot through with Himself, and it is this 
vision, which is personal in character, 
which constitutes the consciousness of the 
love of God. 

It is true that the love of God will clear 
the consciousness of desires which are in- 
jurious, that it will coordinate and har- 
monize the various parts of life so as to 
bring about a real unity; thus the mind is 
clarified, happiness is vastly increased, 
worry, fear and anger tend to disappear — 
the whole self becomes a more powerful, 
determined, effective instrument and one's 
friendship and love grow deeper and more 
sacred. Still, this is not the main reward. 
The main reward is like the reward for any 
other affection, that is, the real reward is 
itself. The consciousness of being tied up 
with God and working with Him is its own 
reward. Just as the consciousness of be- 



156 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

ing tied up with a woman you love is its 
own reward and is quite independent of 
any benefits that it may give, so on a 
larger and more inclusive scale the con- 
sciousness of union with God is its own 
reward. The person who has this ex- 
perience, finding increasing consciousness 
of God, discovers that he is living in a world 
the basis of which is affection rather than 
destructive competition. He finds friend- 
ship, work, and life illumined in a new and 
unexpected way. 

God is to be found not by the tragedy 
of Kegon, but by living right and by open- 
ing up one's consciousness to Him. The 
evidence as to the friendship of God can- 
not be found by the mind, because the 
basic categories of the mind are time, 
space, and causality, and by definition 
God transcends these categories. The 
search for God is not successful through 
the intelligence, because of the nature of 
its limitations. God is to be found by 
personality expressed. We know Him 
through the affections and through the 



HUNGER FOR GOD 157 

will. Bergson has already fully pointed 
out the difference between the evidence 
given by the mind and by the feelings, but 
to one who has had the experience of a 
friend there is no need to argue to prove 
the existence of friendship, neither is evi- 
dence of God necessary to one who has 
had the personal experience with God 
which I have described, and which is 
described in the Bible as ** eternal life." 
^'For this is life eternal that ye may know 
Him." 

To summarize: There is but one way 
to satisfy the hunger for God — and that 
is by knowing Him personally. Experi- 
ence is even more necessary than it is in 
the case of friendship, marriage, or parent- 
hood. This experience is open to any one 
who will meet the conditions — which are: 

1. Take time each day to get acquainted 
and to learn how to speak to Him. Take 
the best time of day there is. 

2. Study how you can be the vehicle of 
His love in some definite direction each 
day. 



158 THE DYNAMIC OF MANHOOD 

3. Plan your days in accordance with 
His will and desires. Live at your best, 
steady, orderly, intelligent. 

4. It is helpful to unite with others and 
compare notes weekly. 

5. Ten weeks is usually enough to get 
such results as will enable one to judge of 
the truth or falsity of the claim that God 
can be known personally and that such 
knowledge puts life on a higher level. 



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